“She had been filmed a couple of times, doing dances from the 1926 Folies-Bergère show and then dances from the 1927 show. These had not been pleasant experiences. She knew nothing about lighting or makeup for film. Her eyelids, without oil on them, burned under the hot lights, which also blinded her. But now she was to have the lead in a feature film for which Maurice Dekobra, a well-known novelist, did the screenplay, with suggestions from Pepito (Abatino). La Sirène des Tropiques was produced and directed by Mario Nalpas, and its assistant director was a young Spaniard named Luis Buñuel. The silent film was shot in the summer of 1927 in the forest of Fontainebleu outside of Paris, a fact all too obvious in the film, which is supposed to take place largely in the Antilles. It tells the basic story with which it would be Josephine Baker’s cinematic lot to be associated”.

(Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra. Joséphine Baker in her Time, Doubleday, New York, 1989)