THE LINCOLN FILM--THOUGHTS AT THE TIME (2012) AND JACOB LAWRENCE AFTERTHOUGHTS

Painting from Frederick Douglass Series (1939) by African American Artist Jacob Lawrence. Copyright restricted. See http://www.jacobandgwenlawrence.org/artandlife04.html. See the rest of the Lawrence's explanatory caption below:

 The rest of Jacob Lawrence's remarks concerning Frederick Douglass upon the mustering of the first lack regiment to fight in the Civil War:
 

"Douglass spoke before the colored men of Massachusetts. He told them that a war fought for the perpetual enslavement of the colored people called logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it. He brought to their memories Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, and Shields Green and John Copeland who fought side by side with John Brown. The 54th and the 55th colored regiments were mustered--

Copy taken from Curriculum Blog Written in 2012 when the film first appeared:

Dear Students: Today is Thanksgiving.  I saw an early show of Lincoln at my local movie theatre in New Jersey.  I found it both overwhelming and breathe taking, and I was a little disappointed that those of you who had already seen it had done such an inadequate job of describing it. Obviously this is a corner of American history that is somewhat foreign to you. 

There are many things that struck me as extremely relevant to our current curriculum.  It helps in this case to read some of the better reviews, which may help to draw your attention to the more important historical features. I will make a folder of some of the links and place them among your course materials.

In regard to the first question I posed, that is whether it would be a reconciliationist, white supremacist or emancipationist version of the Civil War, it seemed to me that the film touched equally upon all three and ultimately did not resolve itself in favor of any of the three. In this sense, it was a fascinatingly wise contemplation on the legacy of the life of Abraham Lincoln, the conclusion of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment. But if I had to choose one, I would choose emancipationist in the sense that everything in the film pointed my thoughts to the future we actually live in, in which we have now a black president who is having as much trouble getting change through Congress as Lincoln had in having the 13th Amendment passed.

The film is about the difficulty of the political process as it occurs in a republic in which freedom of thought and word is a founding assumption.  In the scene near the end of the film in which Thaddeus Stevens and his mistress Lydia Davis are reading the 13th Amendment in bed, this is where D.W. Griffith's white Supremacist film The Birth of a Nation (1915) actually begins. Both Stevens and Davis are horribly caricatured in his film and portrayed as monsters determined to destroy the country and the white majority in favor of the mongrel ambitions of miscegenation and racial mixing. Lydia in particular is demonized.  It seems all the more fitting that Spielberg's film would end with Lydia humanized by the sensible acting of Epatha Merkinson, whom we have all known so many years from Law and Order.  I don't think the part is big enough for an actual nomination but I wish it were.

As for the reconciliationist perspective of a film such as Gone With The Wind (1939), the profound depth and tenderness of the mature relationship between Lincoln and his wife Mary seems to mock the trivial superficiality of such a treatment of the Civil War and hits consequences.  Abraham and Mary's contrast with Rhett and Scarlett couldn't be greater or more revealing.

What makes it such a great lesson for all of us is that it brings the legislation we have been studying vividly to life. I don't think you can come away from watching this film without becoming completely cognizant of what the 13th Amendment achieved (the abolition of slavery), or how it differed from the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as its limitations and ultimately the necessity for both the 14th (citizenship) and the 15th (the vote)Amendment. What is forecast as well, it seems to me, is that none of this legislation would finally succeed in transforming the former slaves into fully recognized and fully participant American citizens.

The portrayal of events takes for granted the omniscience of white supremacy at the time.  The very fact that Congressman Thaddeus Davis, who is in a relationship with a black woman to whom he takes the rough draft of the amendment to read to her in bed, is forced to renounce his own beliefs in racial equality on the floor of the congress in order to get the 13th amendment passed clarifies the hegemony of white supremacy at the time.  Nonetheless, it further embellishes one's enjoyment of these events if one knows what will follow--as you can easily find out by reading, first of all, the second chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (which you have already been assigned to do), not to mention as well the Reconstruction Wiki I assigned you.

Which brings me to the only disappointment I felt in this film and that is that there are no roles for blacks large enough to get your teeth into, not even that of Nancy Keckley who was Mary Lincoln's dressmaker and companion.  All of the black roles--in particular the soldier in the beginning who completes the recitation of the Gettysburg Address as he wanders off into the night--are lovely and beautiful but they are not allowed to take on important dramatic depth and substance. Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to this portion of the history, the month or so preceding the murder of Lincoln, and it seems petty in the end to quibble about this one shortcoming when so many other films in which black actors are featured have none of the pluses of this beautifully and densely written script, but it is hard to believe that this isn't an important consideration.  If it isn't important, why not have the densely written black character instead of not?

To which I have two perhaps contradictory answers.  First, part of the reason it is this way is because of the evils of the star system, and the fact that the name brand combination of the package takes precedence over whatever magic the script and the performance are able to produce. It's got to be an exciting package from the marketing point of view.  Nothing else matters.  Even so I can't imagine that this film will do particularly well at the box office but it should do very well indeed among the awards. 

Just look at the content of the advertising, the focus on the tortured face and figures of the stars--Daniel Day Lewis and Sally Fields--both wonderful but without their former reputations as actors, they would not be able to occupy these roles. Not as unknowns. Which also means the following.  First of all no black woman could be given a major role. Black actresses just aren't there yet. Not even Haile Berry. Not even Vanessa Williams.  Rather it would have to be a black male with a major name, and such a man (Denzel Washington or Sam Jackson or somebody like that) would never take the lesser role that such a part would likely be.  A major black male role would be in danger of completely derailing the subtle balance of the current script.  This film is not about the freedom or the equality of women or of blacks, but rather a moment still pregnant with that possibility.

At the same time, the racial equilibrium of this script speaks to the ongoing power of white supremacy in our culture, to the fact that we still don't know how to imagine what kind of moral and aesthetic hierarchy might actually follow.  That just like Lincoln and his most well intentioned contemporaries we still don't know quite how to incorporate the agency of actual black people (and former slaves) into the mainstream of the story we tell ourselves about the history of our country and our culture.

Black Feminism, the Civil Rights Movement and Film Part I

 Discussion of course work for Black Feminism and the Civil Rights Movement in relation to a number of current films, including Eyes on the Prize, The Butler, 12 Years a Slave, Precious, and Birth of a Nation.

http://blackandbluespeople.blogspot.com/2014/02/black-feminism-and-civil-rights_9.html

Newsroom and The West Wing

The Main Cast of The Newsroom HBO

Several years ago, not sure how many--maybe it was 1999 when my niece began boarding at Choate Rosemary Hall and would stay with me during some of her holidays in our family apartment in New York on 145th Street in Harlem (the apartment that the celebrated jazz singer Dinah Washington owned and which my Mom Faith Ringgold now owns).  We had three televisions, all with cable--of which I was enormously proud. The West Wing by Aaron Sorkin (1998-2006), which I had never heard of or seen, was running simultaneously on re-runs on a dizzying variety of stations, and it appeared to my addled almost fifty year old brain that it was pretty continuously on the air at all times. Yet what I saw over her shoulder as her eyes would wander back to the screen was not the mixture of violence, melodrama and sex that I had learned to expect from highly re-run shows. Rather what even I could see despite all endeavors to ignore it was well suited people (by which I am referring to their clothing) walking up and down hallways, in what I later found out was the West Wing, frantically and heatedly debating a variety of subjects, none of which made any sense to me at the time.  The main thing was that this show was political--it wasn't quite the fashion that it has become--it starred Martin Sheen who I consider to be a serious person who only gets involved in serious projects, and I had previously had a lot of respect for my niece's cinematic taste.  Afterall I had been watching art films and third world films with subtitles with her since she was knee high to a grasshopper.  So what was this West Wing?

Of course, I fell deeply in love with West Wing, and continue to miss that level of engagement on television.  Not Scandal nor any of the rich BBC fare can begin to equal it for intensity and excitement from an intellectual standpoint.  It was my primer for awhile on presidential politics.  I used it to educate myself about what went on in the executive branch.

Now we have Newsroom produced by HBO also written by Aaron Sorkin.  Again we are looking at something that is heavily scripted except this time the target is life at a cable news outfit.  Again we encounter people who live for their job because they are smart and dedicated and young, and most importantly their jobs seem desperately important. That job is to figure out what the story is, to distinguish the truth from what might be most convenient for ratings and advertising, which is more of a problem than one might have imagined.  Perhaps more of a problem than when the news was something broadcast on television one hour in the evening on three networks--the anchors were white, the news was in black and white, and there were all sorts of subject matter having to do with sex and race and culture and class that were totally off limits--making it I think a simpler if not kinder job.

On the other hand, Newsroom which has recently concluded its second season, is dealing with a news environment complicated by the internet, cell phones, tweets, texts, and facebook, as well as a news and entertainment media horribly split between far too many masters and concerns.  How does it make this happen? It sticks with stories that are several years old--stories for which we know more or less some of the outcomes and a little bit about what turned out to be true--and then it presents the tensions and pressures on the media to report the lies.

As is typical with Sorkin as well, the music is fantastic.  This was true on West Wing too.  Will never forget the episode of Martin Sheen in the situation room in some awful star wars scenario in which there was no right and no wrong, and everything was wrong.  They played it against a magnificent song I discovered is included in the satellite capsule to tell the world who and what we were a thousands years from now. Blind Lemon Johnson, an extraordinary artist who sang gospel with the damnest blues flair that could be mustered.  In this case, this is a song that was so well known at the time that instead of singing it, he hummed it.  And he nailed it.  It is the saddest most beautiful sound ever recorded almost, apart from some rare African music I have heard. 

The scenario in Episode 3 of the First Season culminates in the shooting of Congressman Cathy Gifford.  As is typical with high profile shootings, the pressure is on to pronounce her dead on the air and the Newsroom crew withstand the pressure to establish the facts, which is, as we all know now, she isn't dead.

In the scene, one of the upstairs money-types comes running onto the floor of the newsroom demanding to know why the host hasn't called her as dead:

The suit from upstairs (the son of the owner, which is Jane Fonda, by the way) says, "Every second you are not current, a thousand people are changing the channel to the guy who is. That's the business you're in.  "MSNBC, CBS And FOX NPR have all said she is dead. Don tell him" (he shouts to the guy he expects to side with him).

Don says, gravely,  "It's a person.  A doctor pronounces her dead, not the news," with fabulous intense music in the background.  It's special. We care. Meanwhile evil corporate interests continue to finangle and pull strings to prevent the American people from coming within a thousand miles of the news they need to conduct their lives. 

Showboat directed by James Whale. Universal Pictures 1936

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     Based on the novel by Edna Ferber, Show Boat was turned into a successful and innovative Broadway show by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II in 1927.  In 1928 Paul Robeson was offered the role of Joe in which he performed “Ole Man River,” a song that would become his signature piece as the years went by.  In 1936 director James Whale wanted Paul Robeson, who was then living in England, to perform the role for the film version, and offered Effie and Paul Robeson, despite their reluctance, too much money to turn it down ($40,000).

    With a story that draws attention to the rapid evolution of stage performance in the United States, most of the activity revolves around the emerging obsolescence of a showboat company of actors and singers on a showboat on the Mississippi River from its heyday in the 1880s through the beginning of the 1920s.  There are three loosely interconnected plots.  The first deals with the fate of Julie, who at the beginning of the film is the star of the company until a disgruntled lover reports her to the authorities in Mississippi for having black blood and therefore committing the sin of “miscegenation” with a racially mixed cast.  Her leading man, her white husband dramatically cuts her finger and drinks her blood as the sheriff arrives to close the company down.  But now the husband is black too in the state of Mississippi by virtue of the “one drop” rule of racial identity. 

   The second, larger plot has to do with the romance of the company director’s daughter (played by Irene Dunne), who becomes the next leading lady, and her romance with a handsome young gambler who becomes her leading man.  

     Meanwhile, Robeson figures in the third entirely subsidiary plot around his role as Joe, the lazy husband of the company cook (Hattie McDaniels).  The well known stereotype of the comically trifling black husband and his overbearing and not pretty wife is filled out more tastefully than usual with Robeson’s excellent immaculate rendition of his songs, eliciting from Daniels (who will subsequently win a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in Gone With The Wind) both obvious delight at finally having such a wonderful leading man together with one of the best performances she ever gave on film. 

     Despite the fact that this film is rife with every stereotype in the book of Hollywood, Whale seems to weave it all together with a surprisingly light and deeply engrossing sense of the fun of it all, which figures into a lesser trend plainly visible in some of Hollywood’s output during the 30s that there were some constituencies in Hollywood and on Broadway who were beginning to regard African American culture and black face as fodder for camping it up.  Although there are tangible no breakthroughs from a contemporary Civil Rights (meaning as envisioned by a Walter White or a W.E.B. Du Bois) standpoint, there is already the sense that racial views are not so seriously regarded as they once were.   It is hard to imagine, for instance, how Southern distributors could have excised all signs of race from this film—given that the African American presence was evenly distributed in almost every frame of the film with a bevy of black men and women singing and dancing in the background.   Even Clarence Muse’s small but dignified performance as a janitor near the end of the movie hints of the coming of a new age in black Hollywood.

     The particular disappointments here from a racial standpoint is to remind us that this film is made in what is still  1930s  U.S.A. in which Jim Crow is in full effect: the role of Julie, the mulatto, was not given to the fair skinned, strikingly beautiful, green-eyed Fredi Washington who had already made an impression as the mulatto lead in Imitation of Life (1934), but instead to a white actress (Helen Morgan); and one of Irene Dunne’s largest production numbers is performed entirely in full black face get-up including wigs and large painted white lips.   She is nonetheless a delight to watch in every frame throughout, highlighting the increasingly campy aspects of blackface performances during the period, or in other words the manner in which blackface, if it is done right usually involves a send up of gender stereotypes, as well as race.

Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I can't remember what age I was when I first began to read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and as have most people, I have seen many versions of it over the years. It was my first Dickens novel, and over the years, I read so many others--Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, The Story of David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit-- every one I could get my hands on.  In my heart of hearts, it wasn't Henry James or William Faulkner or Mark Twain or James Baldwin.  I loved Dickens best of all at least until I was 30.  Although I was sternly warned that he wasn't deep, that his wit and sensibility were too obvious, his laughter and sentimentality too grandiose, I threw caution to the wind in my lavish reading sessions, which I considered nobody's business but my own. I really didn't care what anybody else thought.

And then I really moved on at some point many years later.  No more novels of any kind.  Just heavy tomes of one kind or another, imparting much wisdom about things I could have scarcely imagined when I was in my 20s.  And I love this stuff, the maps and so forth, about slavery and the world of the 17th, 18th and 16th century.  Africa, Europe, Asia.  Fiction I have pretty much left behind although I always turn to it when I am very very sad.

Generally my response to Christmas is some variation on bah humbug!  But now I have all this streaming video, access to trailers of every kind and I begun to notice that there have been many remakes of a Christmas Carol and to long to see it once again, to revisit the story of the old man who visits Christmas Past, Present and Future.  I chose a recent version (Disney 2009 with Jim Carrey) which is neatly animated with people and things which look almost real.  It was very beautiful although the look of it mattered to me less than I thought it would. The thing that struck me most was the idea that you could be someone who shunned poor people and their problems, and that in the course of a night be shown the error of your ways--as though you had never meant any harm and simply had not known better.  That the way to heaven and happiness is through good deeds and generosity.  I haven't read the novel in a long time so I can't say if this is so for Dickens, but the film seems to have little interest in the causes that resulted in Scrooge's tragic abundance of greed and lack of fun.

But I think the story is exceedingly hopeful and that, of course, it renders those who would not take part in the spirit of giving and love that is at the core of the idea of Christmas as absolutely insupportable in their mischief.  So I am won over. Was just getting ready to be quite bitter about all the money going out and nothing coming in since I am on the giving side of Christmas at 61. But I am just as grateful that I have something to part with.  And I think I will take a bit of Scrooge's lesson and simply be glad to be here and well to greet the day, rather than in the cold dark tomb, whether it is inhabited by malevolent spirits or not.

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey

"I started imparting wisdom about men--wisdom gathered from working more than half a century on one concept: how to be a man.  I also spent countless hours talking to my friends, all of whom are men.  They are athletes, movie and television stars, insurance brokers and bankers, guys who drive trucks, guys who coach basketball teams, ministers and deacons, Boy Scout leaders, store managers, ex-cons, inmates, and yes, even hustlers. And one simple thing is true about each of us: we are very simple people and all basically think in a similar way."

from ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A MAN by Steve Harvey

     Sunday afternoon I went to see Think Like a Man, which is executive produced by Steve Harvey and based on his book, with my Mom Faith Ringgold and my sister Barbara Wallace.  Rarely does it happen since I live in Englewood that we decide to go to the movies. My mother and I don't drive and my Dad has given up going to the movies apparently.  So the only way it can happen is if my sister Barbara decides to come out and drive us.  Miracle of miracles on this Sunday Barbara did just that.
What we really wanted to see was the documentary Bully because Mom has initiated a project on bullying for her children's art competition for her Anyone Can Fly Foundation this year.  She has written a number of songs about bullies, which she has shared on facebook, on twitter and with the children who are the target population of the foundations activities--the Thurgood Marshall Academy run by principal Dawn de Costa, an artist herself, and a key player currently in the foundation's activities with public school children in Harlem and the visual arts.  However, Bully, which is a limited release documentary, wasn't playing in New Jersey any closer than Montclair which is a major haul.
   I suggested instead that we see Think Like a Man in particular because it has occupied the number one spot in box office receipts for a number of weeks.  This is the first time such a thing has happened with a black film, by which I mean a film written and produced by black folk and acted in mostly by black performers.  It's been a difficult and long haul to get to this place I think because the problem of occupying the number one spot at the box office is that a great many whites must decide to deliberately go to the theatre with the understanding that there will also be significant numbers of blacks in attendance, and everybody can sit wherever they wish.

   It has been my observation that the prospect of occupying a movie theatre with a significant number of blacks can be (and always has been) pretty much enough to keep white audiences away from the movie theatre.  Others might also suggest that whites are not terribly eager to go to the movies to watch a predominantly black cast perform but I have never bought that perspective for the following reasons: whites seem perfectly willing to travel halfway across the country and lay down major cash to get to Broadway (a pain in the butt on the best of days) to thoroughly enjoy black cast musicals and dramas.

    At the last show I was honored to attend (I sat maybe six rows from the back of the house high up enough to give me a nose bleed but I had my Dad's binoculars with me), Porgy and Bess (high up on the bucket list) not only were there beaucoup white folks in attendance but white children as well.  I sat next to a little girl who could not have been more than 5 and her behavior was flawless even when the action grew slightly turgid and the music rather complicated and high brow (the music was fabulous by the way--can't wait to get the album).  And she wasn't the only perfectly behaved child in the house. 

    White folks definitely go to black shows perhaps not in astronomical numbers I will grant (that is to say a black show still isn't a rock solid investment on Broadway) and maybe some portion of the audiences who bankroll Broadway might prefer in their heart of hearts to view a predominantly white cast production (with no racial theme) but the point is that a black cast is not a deal breaking disincentive for enough people to prevent there from being at least two or three black cast shows running on Broadway pretty much all the time these days.

Not the way it was when I was growing up.  I will never forget how the media tried to killed the Wiz even after it was drawing standing room only crowds back when I was a shortie.

    But not a single black show on Broadway can reach even an opening night without the possibility of attracting a significant portion of the caliber of white audiences (and black but we are only 20% of the pop and given to poverty and unemployment besides) who can consider paying $200 for an orchestra seat and/or actually traveling distance (meaning airfare), maybe even putting up at a hotel--in other words folks who vacation in New York City (something I have never understood given that I was born and raised in NYC except that now that I live in New Jersey, I too have joined the herd albeit via NJ transit. )

   In any case, it seems as though Think Like a Man has solved the problem of bringing black and white movie audiences peacefully together without the seat assignments I suspect Broadway attendees find somewhat comforting.

     I reasoned therefore that the audience would be largely integrated racially, which is a rarity in movie theatres (especially outside of NYC) in itself for a black film and that there was something about this film which raised the comfort level of multi-ethnic audiences being together.  It had to be content based. I knew it wouldn't have a racial focus.  I knew that it had to have attributes which drew together the interests of black and white audiences, much as The Help did, except this was by all indications a romantic comedy, and therefore a feel good movie--definitely a plus.

    Think Like a Man deserves to be paid close attention, especially by somebody like me--fascinated by the history and the impact of the cinema on audiences as indicated by my determination to complete a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at NYU in 1999, and to continue to write about and follow film production worldwide despite the overwhelming financial discouragements of doing so.

     Nonetheless I might not have pushed the family to attend if I hadn't had a specific goal in mind.  At the age of 60 I need specific goals for my every move and rarely act upon whimsy.  I am not your typical audience member because entertainment is not on my bucket list.  I am entertained enough by enlightenment and the enhancement of the knowledge I have already built in this and other fields.  The spiritual and philosophical pay off of expertise tends to increase with time.

    Witness all these blogs I've got (I know you've never read any of them but curiously that doesn't seem to matter so much anymore) every one of which focuses upon visual culture, particularly of the black variety.

    So I had a clear goal in going to see this film and dragging family with me.

Since I've agreed to write a critical introduction for a black feminist anthology on the work of Tyler Perry, I immediately realized the success of Think Like a Man as an outcome of the successful movement of black films spearheaded by the output of Tyler Perry in the last decade, but by no means exclusive to the films of Tyler Perry.

These films tend to focus on relationships between men and women--usually very attractive men and women of a certain age (roughly twenties to thirties)--their snags and successes.  They always feature a certain amount of soul music, sometimes significant quantities of gospel and perhaps even scenes regarding church attendance or (Christian) religious propaganda gently applied. At the same time, an important collateral objective of this movement is to figure out how to reinvent the formula--which largely appeals to black audiences--in a manner that will propel it into the interests of a mainstream audience composed largely of young and middle aged whites who make up the bulk of film theatre attendance.

     Nobody doubts or laments the success of these films via streaming and video but the financial bottom line (in the first year) expands exponentially if one can add to it large numbers of the mainstream in box offices during weekends close to the opening.  In order for this to happen, the film needs wide release on the opening weekend.

Another benefit perhaps is the elusive foreign and world distribution, which continues to be an obstacle for black films thus far, or so the critics may say.  I am not sure whether this is actually true or will continue to be true much longer because of how people consume films. The longevity of the broad interest of people in films has changed so much.  Also, it seems to me two huge film markets are constructed and composed by the film professionals of a number of nations not clearly white--India, China and Japan, to name the ones I follow regularly.

Because of the technology, which I assume is also changing in similar ways although maybe not at the same rate in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, what we choose to watch and when we choose to watch it is changing as well.

     For instance, in regard to Bully, with its rating and distribution issues (almost unavoidable in the documentary form unless the product is both frilly and irresistable like Madonna's Truth or Dare), and the fact that it is not a feature film with special visual effects (3D or other high concept qualities), I am thinking that in a few weeks, it is going to show up either on my apple television where I will probably have to pay something to see it but nobody will have to drive to Montclair.  This realization represents a disincentive in terms of getting me to a movie theatre.  I went to see The Artist in a movie theatre also in Edgewater precisely because I could see that the strategy for the release of the film had kept it out of the streaming and video market and that I could no longer wait.

    So the 3 of us went to see Think Like a Man and even though there were a lot of distractions of being with the family, there were advantages as well in that I got their opinions of the film at the same time as seeing it myself.  One of the things that struck me right away was that this was a film that was heavily tied to the circulation of an actual book in a very explicit way (Steve Harvey's Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man) like Precious, based on the novel by Sapphire, which was a critical success although not I think a success with black audiences because of its depressing content (only one woman in my family would even agree to see it either in the theatre or streaming), and The Help, which also had the depressing factor as well for some albeit not all black female audiences (it seemed to depend on how you regard the history of black women as domestics in the South).

When Viola Davis was nominated for Best Actress in The Help, whatever issues I had with the film were pretty much resolved.

In all three cases the prior success of the book served to underwrite the interest and prior knowledge of movie audiences.

   Nonetheless, I had never heard of Steve Harvey's book (on leave from the job right now so I don't pick up as much random flow as I ordinarily would teaching in Harlem) until I saw this film, which is very much all about the book.

 But I now have a copy of the book on my kindle, haven't read much but it strikes me as quite readable, maybe even slightly more so than the film, itself, which sometimes seemed a tad overly light weight--not that I wouldn't expect light weight right off the bat from any film that could occupy the number one position at the box office in the United States for weeks at a time.  When it comes to quality in films, the typically successful U.S. product is not ordinarily one of the top contenders. American film audiences seem to gravitate toward high concept films, with lots of action, special effects, and a high body count if possible, always regarded as infinitely preferable to psychological depth or complexity.

I've just started reading the Steve Harvey book, which is frankly and directly a self-help advise book for young women (black and white?) who are trying to get reluctant boyfriends to marry them--an inherently overly developed topic. But nonetheless I already think it is going to be very helpful in the process of analyzing the attractions of these new black films for audiences, especially in regard to the particular way in which black Christianity seems somehow woven into the mix.

Blues for Mr. Charlie Should Be a Film

 Written as program notes initially for a production of Blues for Mr Charlie at the New Haarlem Arts Theatre at the City College of New York directed by Eugene Nesmith.

 James Baldwin notes that he was initially inspired to write “Blues for Mr. Charlie” by the murder of Emmett Till, a 14 year old boy from Chicago who was visiting his grandfather for the summer in Money, Mississippi.  Not only was he brutally murdered for a trivial encounter with a young proprietor of a country store, but the culprits were well known locally to have done it, although they were vindicated in a small town Southern court with an entirely white male jury in a proceedings that was recorded by television cameras already hot on the trail of the impending Civil Rights Movement.  

The case was news for many reasons, among them that the murderers told their entire story to a journalist, William Bradford Huie, for payment of $40,000 so at least one version of little Emmett Till’s torturous death was published in a magazine and is therefore known in graphic detail.  It was the kind of thing that could not help but stir the imagination.  As a consequence of it, Northern blacks began to reconsider sending their children to their relatives in the South during the summers.  Some people suggested that Till’s murder was part of the backlash of the South in retaliation for the unanimous Supreme Court Decision Brown versus Board of Education the year before overturning Plessys vs. Ferguson and making “separate but equal” public schools illegal.  

Of course, there was a lot of action in Alabama as well as early as 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section on a local bus, spearheading the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emergence of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as a national leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

But another eight years would unfold before Baldwin finally finished Blues for Mr. Charlie.  They were crucial years to the nation and to our drama, which he endowed with the distinct flavor of subsequent events--not only the many murders, beatings, arrests, church bombings of a racially integrated brigade of Civil Rights protesters and workers but also the subsequent organization of an important and substantial multiracial student wing best epitomized by the efforts of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee).  In the early 60s, SNCC began significantly compete with an older more conservative, more religion based leadership of the movement as provided by SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), CORE, and the NAACP.  The conflict and the tension was always over the use of nonviolence and the inevitable self-sacrifice  and pain such tactics entailed.  

As the pressure mounted, so did the random violence.  In 1963 NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers (to whom Baldwin dedicated his play), a heroic local figure, was murdered on his own front porch in Jackson, Mississippi with a long range rifle wielded by a White Supremacist fanatic, making Evers the first in a series of major political assassinations relevant to the Civil Rights Movement.  His murderer was known as well but not prosecuted until 1994, and Baldwin would not live to see it. The bitterness of these unpunished crimes haunts “Blues for Mr. Charlie.”

In that same year of 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Alabama and wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in response to the criticism of conservative clergy of his aggressive nonviolent tactics, chastising him to wait on the legal means once favored by the NAACP. Nonetheless, the historic March on Washington, which took place in late August under the organizational leadership of Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, presented the Movement as a strong United Front.  Even as Bull Connor set dogs and waterhoses on student protesters and four black girls lost their lives in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  

Baldwin’s character Richard draws upon an intoxicating masculine brew composed of the innocence of the 14 year old Emmett Till, the ferocity of Malcolm X and the smooth seductive masculinity of a Sam Cooke, author of one of the major Civil Rights anthems, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Richard’s father the Minister Meridian echoes the dignity and frustration of then current Civil Rights leadership: the Martin Luther Kings, the Fred Shuttleworths, the Wyatt T. Walkers, the Reverend Ralph Abernathys, the James Farmers and the Bayard Rustins.

Parnell, who is the Mr. Charlie of the title, is the Southern Liberal, who has perhaps many real life models but the one that strikes me most deeply is none other than the great Southern writer William Faulkner, who was never really able to bring himself to believe that the time for change on racial issues had finally arrived, whose confusion on such matters was aptly presented in the film version of one his most direct novels on the topic, Intruders in the Dust (1949), which can be thought of as a useful prequel to this play. The sequel then would be Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.

It's a heady mixture, a blues for Mr. Charlie indeed.  We have yet to comprehend the melodic implications of such a dilemma, much less to supercede them.  Mr. Charlie, much more so than the Richards or the Meridians or even the Lyles, remains an unresolved connundrum of deceit and politesse blocking the liberation of oppressed peoples all over the world.  

The Help: Black Women and Hollywood

Viola Davis, the real star of The Help (2009)

    The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a bestseller and a big favorite with black women’s book clubs this year, is appearing as a film this month with Viola Davis (Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Doubt 2009), featured in the role of Abilene, the child-loving and conscientious black maid and nanny in 1960s Mississippi who risks life and limb to tell her story.  
      

If there were, in fact, lots of other opportunities for black women (of every hue) to strut their wares in the marketplace of American films, I would affirm The Help in its addition to the spectrum, providing a deeper resonance of an experience (working class black women) ordinarily underrepresented.  But black female acting talent rarely gets attention these days.
      
 In contrast to the stunning accomplishments of black men as actors and directors in the last decade, there continue to be only three variations on black female participation in American film. The more common of these is a “colorblind” role in which a black woman is cast in a part that would ordinarily be played by someone who was white, and in a story in which there is no attention to racial issues.  The second kind is the black cast film in which pretty much everybody is black, the most recent prominent examples of this type are the films of Tyler Perry.  The third kind of film (the category to which The Help belongs), which has always been the rarest, is one in which race is an issue or a problem, and the black woman plays a specifically black role, usually not the leading role.  
       
In the history of feature films, black maids have had a long and distinguished history: beginning significantly with Louise Beavers in Imitation of LIfe (nominated for an Academy Award as a Supporting Actress in 1934) and Hattie McDaniels in Gone With The Wind (Oscar Award Winner of Best Supporting Actress in 1939), both of whom had to struggle valiantly on set for every shred of dignity mustered on screen.
        In an era in which black female employment was primarily confined to domestic or acgricultural labor, black actresses were most frequently excluded from the silver screen entirely or forced to play maids regardless of abilities.  Thanks to interventions by NAACP President Walter White with the Hollywood studios, singer and actress Lena Horne never played a maid. Still her major appearances were confined to leads in two black cast films in 1943--Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Billie Holiday even played a maid in New Orleans (1947).
        Viola Davis, who is stunningly gifted, has had an important and promising career thus far on stage and on screen but The Help isn’t likely to bring her any closer to breaking with the other less talked about Hollywood convention of not featuring dark skinned black women in dramatic (romantic) leads. The role this part is positioned to play in Davis’s career is to show her capacity for serious dramatic roles. Would that the role weren’t so entirely sexless as well, but rarely are black maids in the movies allowed to be sexual. There were some notable exceptions in the heydays of the 60s and the 70s (such as Diahann Carroll in Claudine and Abbey Lincoln For Love of Ivy) but The Help isn’t one of them.
     Davis's role in Help (Disney 2011) fails to break with the past in any respect. Featured in a supporting role as a maid in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, Davis is dressed down without makeup, to age her by a decade or so, and in order to disguise her striking good looks and fabulous figure.  Her work as Abilene, and that of the equally stellar Octavia Spenser in the role of her best friend as the rambunctious Minny, pivots around the central part which goes to the white actress Emma Stone as the young and spunky Squeeter (Emma Stone), the recent Ole Miss grad.  Squeeter, who is home for the summer, has the bright idea of secretly interviewing black maids in town about their work conditions under their white mistresses, who also happen to be her best friends.
   The film significantly mutes the dangers inherent to this plan for the black women in Mississippi in 1962, where James Meridith had just broken segregation by registering for law school at Ole Miss, touching off a riot which required the intervention of President John Kennedy and  U.S. Marshalls, and in which two people were killed.
    At the very point at which the story begins, the cooperation of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council are making life in Jackson frequently harrowing for black people.  Hundreds of Freedom Riders, arrested in Jackson in 1961 for the temerity of integrating the waiting rooms in the bus terminal, were sentenced to hard time at the notorious Parchman Penitentiary.
     While events in The Help revolve around the sometimes humorous, sometimes ghastly interactions between the white women and their maids, the fatal shooting of NAACP Field Coordinator Medgar Evers on his front porch by the infamous Byron De La Beckwith (finally convicted in 1994) takes place off camera and in the distant background of the film.
    For white women in Mississippi in the 1960s it could be as dangerous to be perceived as sympathetic to blacks as it was for blacks to be perceived as hostile to whites.  Legal segregation was still in effect and crossing the boundaries could and did cost many people their lives.  Nonetheless by the early 60s, Mississippi was the scene of a major Civil Rights Movement initiative spearheaded by Bob Moses and SNCC that would culminate in the Freedom Summer of 1964.                
    Kathryn Stockett's fictional work casts this interaction between black maids and Skeeter as a minor yet significant chapter in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet no such chapter exists in the annals of the Movement, now extensively documented. Stockett, who is herself only 40 years old, may be reflecting unintentionally on more recent working conditions for domestic help in Jackson, Mississippi.  
    Stockett has a brother who has for many years employed a nanny for his children named Abilene, currently 60 years old, who complains that the character Stockett created is based on her (same name and they both have a gold tooth), causing her great personal discomfort and embarrassment.  Fully supported by her employers, she is suing the author for damages in the amount of $75,000, an seemingly intentionally symbolic amount given that  the book has already sold nearly half a million copies and is sure to sell even more upon the release of the film in August.   I can well imagine that it might be uncomfortable for Abilene Clark to consider the prospect of thousands of readers confusing her life as a 60 year old woman (I, myself, am 59) in 2010 as a cipher for that of the character Abilene, a total victim of the Jim Crow South half a century ago.  

ENDIT
   

The Birth of a Nation: Michele and Others on the Film

http://blackandbluespeople.blogspot.com/search/label/Slavery

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Michele Wallace

Publicity for 1927 Silent Version of Uncle Tom's Cabin

http://blackandbluespeople.blogspot.com/search/label/Slavery
This is a link to my commentary on David Blight's wonderful series of lectures on the Civil War and Reconstruction in itunes university via his classroom at Yale.  We must have courses like this at the City College of New York. In the meanwhile this one is available to everyone who has a computer.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Before and After the Jim Crow Era
This is my article on the topic particularly of Uncle Tom's Cabin on stage and in film printed in TDR in 2000. Great stuff. 

Melvin Van Peeble's Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song!

The production of Melvin Van Peeble's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasss Song by the Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, which can be found at the Burnt Sugar Archestra Site (http://burntsugarindex.com)

was a difficult thing for me to know how to categorize, which blog to put it in but I decided that film or video came the closest. I am afraid I can't risk this turning up in my course material but on the other hand, I felt strongly positive about it. First I thought to myself, you can't write about this. This is too scandalous. I often think that these days. I thought to myself would they dare to follow the territory of the film? Because the film was scandalous. I remember exactly how scandalous it felt to be sitting in the movie theatre watching that film way back in 1971 when I was all of 19 and when it broke new ground in the black film world and I was still just a little pup.

Looking back at it years hence one of the things that made me particularly uncomfortable was Van Peeble's performance in the role. I didn't know much back then about real people playing roles in movies so maybe I just couldn't make the necessary leap of imagination. It kind of reminded me of Richard Wright playing himself in the film of Native Son, which really didn't work for me either. In that case, Wright was much too old to be convincing in the part, and maybe too invested in making the material work. Maybe Van Peebles wasn't exactly the most convincing actor.

Somehow it just wasn't working whereas the strapping young man who plays Sweetback in the opera production is just perfect, one of those real beauties with long lashes (I can imagine). It's a type. There was this wonderful actor who played the lead role in Native Son in the stage productions of that period in the West Village. Maybe his name was Beau Rucker. He continued to turn up in productions of August Wilson's plays. Anyhow it is that type.

I was told by my teacher at NYU (Village Voice Film Critic par excellence Jim Hoberman) that Sweet Sweetback was a film that broke all kinds of records because the white industry doomed it to failure and yet the black community turned out en masse to see it (as Van Peebles the younger does such an excellent job of describing in Baadassss!--2003, Sony Pictures, his biographical film about his father). Well I was, myself, part of that black audience that turned out. But then I went to see anything with black people in it back then. I saw it all, just as a matter of course.

So I thought I will just take a little peek since it is right there on the web because truth be told I had adored Van Peeble's stage shows even at the time-- Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death and the other one, both of which I saw from orchestra seats when they first opened on Broadway. Saw a revival of Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death at the Harlem Repertory Theatre a few years back that was absolutely wonderful wonderful wonderful but the material is such that you just can't mess it up. Somehow I think it has escaped the notice of many people what a wonderful thing musical theatre can be. Don't know how the Orchestra made the leap but however I hope they will be able to continue. Of course this production was staged in France, no surprise because it would be difficult to do such a thing in the United States, still I think. Yet Peebles has that knack.

But Sweet Sweetback, well that was another matter all together. I think it was a sexist film, a humiliating experience for a young black woman such as myself who encountered lewd propositions on almost every corner of Harlem that I crossed. It was a crazy crazy time so far as that goes, and exhausting. I was never either raped or assaulted in the streets of Harlem, perhaps because I knew my way around pretty good. It was afterall my home. But in my view back then Sweet Sweetback had no redeeming qualities except that a black man made the film industry pay him. Rape has no redeeming qualities--regardless of the gender of the victim-- so far as I am concerned. That's just non-negotiable, the bedrock of being a feminist, which is what I was then and am now.

But the odd thing is that the translation to the stage is somehow irresistable. I had, in fact, begun to notice that musical theatre, for instance in opera, can support almost any kind of outlandish content provided the music and the sense of spectacle is there. The same problematic content is there in this production of Sweetback (they didn't skirt it) of what I can only regard as the sexual exploitation of a minor as the centerpiece but yet it is so beautifully and brilliantly performer by the Archestra that I have to give them a shout out. I can't defend it and I won't make any apologies. Nobody asked me whether it was a good idea. Nobody ever would but if you should happen across this note, then you'll know that my recommendation would be that you take a look for yourself, be careful about minors because the content is risque but if you can handle that-- with all the ridiculously bad pornographic crap floating around these days--to get a look at this, or a listen anyhow. Thanks Greg Tate.

Added Notes:  rehearsal notes and comments on the production by Melvin Van Peebles at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JIq2FSg8TH8#!

Watching a Lot of Movies

Julie & Julia (2009), Director: Nora Ephron

The thing that was really a revelation to me this particular year, with all the usual trying to catch up with films nominated for the Academy Awards, etc, is Julie and Julia written and directed by Nora Ephron, starring Meryl Streep who is playing the cook Julia Childs.

I did just love this movie despite realizing all of its shortcomings and why other people I know couldn't be bothered to watch it or might find it dull or otherwise lacking. For one thing, it is completely and unabashedly what some might regard as upper middle class (Julia Child studies French cooking at the Cordon Bleu in Paris in the 50s I guess and her husband is a member of the United States Diplomatic Core in Paris and other European capitals).

Child is a tall and flamboyant woman to begin with so from the first scene she seems like a star. The other story, which anchors Julia Child's early career to the present is about a young couple, both very much New York based who have a cheap apartment in Queens but dine on the French food Julie cooks from Julia Child's published collection of recipes. Her husband is an editor for Archaeology Magazine I think.

Like Sleepless in Seattle (which this film reminds me of and which Nora Ephron also directed), the entire thing takes place inside of a bubble of such privilege and ease that I feel compelled to remind myself that this is not the real world. Of course, I just watched it on my teeny tiny old television and so could not enjoy all the care and attention that was put into presenting period costumes and sets, and the richness of the food. But I've got a pretty good imagination about these things. I added those in my head.

So it is one of those things that is somehow about whiteness, even though there is nothing even vaguely jingoistic or aggressive or xenophobic about it. It's just having a good time, like Ephron's Heartburn (which I just absolutely adored) in a female centered space. But there is an added quotient of caution so far as depth that I sense in light comedies today like everyone has to be very careful to make sure not to allow any of the various fears of our present world (including our increasing military commitments) to creep in. It is more alarming to me to notice that there is this pulling back then if there weren't such a pulling back. In a way, the best measure of how conservative a time is to look at the comic films of that time. Whatever it is that everybody was nervous about is usually completely elided. In this case anything to do with religion, race, war or poverty.

I mean how do you make a movie about New York City after 9/11 without some of that stuff creeping in. Julie is a middle level bureaucrat handling the cases of survivors of 9/11. We get to hear about them as an endless and depressing litany of complaints on her headset in her cubicle concerning insurance, illness and death. It becomes a kind of morbid joke, which was fine with me and actually I would have liked to see more of this kind of "black" humor. Although perhaps not quite right for anybody who had a more direct experience of 9/11, it was weirdly optimistic and sunny. Maybe this is a movie made by people who are thinking that perhaps our military response was overblown and therefore should not be addressed every time we see a movie. The Armageddon syndrome in certainly getting exhausted in many of the other movies I've been reviewing this year.

But it also it felt like from a commercial standpoint that the film was reaching for a particular niche, for an audience that would be eager and willing to ignore what was going on in the rest of the world outside their kitchens, or were simply exhausted by such matters, or who might later be interested in something like this in the ongoing market of dvd viewing via netflix and other services. I mean at any given time I've got about 200 films in my queue on netflix and nothing is worse than not being able to think of anything I want to rent. Pure hell.

I would imagine people rent films to serve particular needs and I would imagine how Julie and Julia could fit a wide variety of profiles for an evening's entertainment. Me I am always researching something and right now its biographical approaches to American artists, especially but not limited to women. Julia Child would definitely fit that mold. And I would imagine a great deal more can be said about her than was said during her lifetime. Although that might depend on who survives to run her estate.

Julia Child has been dead a few years, still has successful cook books and an archive of television programs available for viewing. She also wrote an autobiography in which she documented her romance with the man she married, which also provides fodder for this script.

The film presents an extremely comfortable world and I found it particularly welcome to look at a film and not have to prepare myself for the shock of some unpleasant reminder that nowhere and nothing will ever be safe again.

At the same time, I am painfully aware that this is just the kind of film about white people that black people are always lamenting is never made about any of us. Why do white women get Julie and Julia whereas we black women get Precious? It's not as if we don't like to cook and go to France. Moreover, where the hell is the white Precious? Would she ever even get beyond reality television or Judge Judy?

Moreover, why is this story about this incredibly important woman (I am assuming) so damn light? Isn't there a basic unreality to this kind of presentation of happiness? And the people who want there to be films like this about black people, are they aware that this is essentially a women's film, a romantic comedy, with a very specific and narrow target audience? If one were to do the same kind of film about black couples in love with strong ambitious women dominating their relationships as a comedy, would there be a sufficient audience, black, white or whatever? That would be the scenario if feminism had actually succeeded in this country, which it has not. Indeed, quite the opposite.

As for Ephron's version here, I feel compelled to say that there is an unreality to all this lovey dovey happy romantic comedy stuff with zero bite that is finally offensive. Personally I like the genre of romantic comedy, always have. Just saw one Sidney Poitier did--For Love of Ivy and actually that was what Guess Who is Coming to Dinner was as well. But it drives me a little crazy that people can't be shown as believably in love without suspending all disbelief, and wasting everybody's time essentially exploring an entire universe that has no practical application. It is almost as if you can't have any politics or homeless people in such a film at all for fear the center will not hold.

Yes, this film is a breathe of fresh air in comparison to all the other competition for the year of 2009. It is so fluffy and light that it almost reminds me of the old genre films of the 40s when films were always made for a particular niche audience--women's films, Westerns, war films, mysteries and crime noirs, comedies and so on. This film seemed very satisfying as a women's film made for people who adore Meryl Streep and eager for yet another opportunity to wallow in her splendid gifts. The story of this tall fabulous not very pretty creature who found the expression of her genius in French cooking and the writing of cook books, and in the hosting of a strange cooking show broadcast on American television in the 60s--it tickles the fancy.

In my timeline for the 60s, the publication of Julia Child's masterpiece The Art of French Cooking in 1961 belongs there. The 50s and the 60s were important times in the affection for things French among a certain class of Americans who were set upon upward mobility. My family participated in that affection. I went to France on the S.S. Liberte for the first time with my family in 1961. I was nine and I have never had such a wonderful time in all my life since. The food was absolutely splendid. The ocean was bracing. The company was convivial and racially progressive. I remember having my first taste of French wine during this trip. All meals were served with a bottle of white and a bottle of red and replaced as they emptied. Anyhow, this film recaptures those happy days for me.

The lovely young Julie who sets for herself the task of working her way through Child's first book of recipes in the course of a year and writing about it for a blog in order to find herself and her voice helps to establish for me the possibilities of blogging, and it corroborates the satisfaction I feel in doing it.

Of course, I am assuming that most blogs will turn out to be a total waste of time, polluting the verbal airwaves or whatever they are but I know that I am blogging because I am a writer and it is the most natural thing in the world for me to write all the time about everything. After all these years of teaching writing, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone who isn't very serious about writing could continue to produce and add to a blog in a persuasive manner year in and year out. It cannot be maintained unless life is simplified of its many meaningless distractions.

So I like this movie, am surprised I liked it so much, and surprised I haven't heard more about it. My neice who began me on the path of blogging and who helps me with all my web concerns also loves to cook. I am looking forward to introducing her to this film and perhaps Julia Childs' recipes. There was once a time when I was young when I loved to cook.

Talk to Me

This is a real great movie directed by Kasi Lemmons, made in 2007 about a dj named Petey Greene who really made D.C. sit up and notice.  Beautifully done with Don Cheadle in the lead playing Petey Greene, also executive producing.  Supporting cast was Chiwetel Ejiorfor as Dewey Hughes, Taraji P. Henson as Vernell Watson, Cedric the Entertainer as Nighthawk Bob Terry.  

And yet not one Oscar nomination.  How could that be? 

Grey Gardens on HBO

The HBO film recently screened is intriguing although there are many questions left unanswered so far as I am concerned.  From 1936 through the making of the documentary in 1973 through the present, there's still a lot that remains unexplained or unsaid.

Not sure whether the scenario adequately explains what becomes of Big and Little Edie and how they found themselves living in such squalor in East Hampton.  The sense one gets is of two frivolous, useless upper class women who never learned to do anything and found themselves in a house full of breeding cats and raccoons.  Also that they were slightly insane although the situation would require an uncanny combination of insanity and intelligence.  

Added Note: Need revision.  Now love the HBO production. More development. 

Oscar Micheaux Conference

At the following link: http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/micheaux/program.html, you will find the program of a film series exhibited at the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the Walter Reade Theater.  The screenings took place from February 6th through the 19th in 2009.

All of Micheaux's films are worth seeing at least once in a 35 mm print in a beautiful state-of-the-art theater like the Walter Reade.  Body and Soul, which I have now viewed several times in 35 mm is a rare pleasure to see because it stars the young and devastatingly handsome Paul Robeson.  Despite whatever the shortcomings of the script and/or continuity, Robeson is nonetheless absolutely stunning, especially when viewing the correctly restored copy and also considering that the year is 1925.  

Each of the other films is immensely fascinating for entirely different reasons.  Of films by other director's, The Flying Ace rates among the very best silent films I have ever seen of any variety. Great performances and a wonderful story. 

Cabin in the Sky, directed by Vincente Minnelli, is a masterpiece of its time and contains some of the very best examples of black performance from an all-star cast including a young Lena Horne and and an endearingly humorous Butterfly McQueen, as well as Ethel Waters, Eddie Anderson, John Bubbles, Louis Armstrong all at the peak of their powers.  The story which derives from an important stage production is more than a little silly but the music, which includes songs not only from Ethel Waters and Lena Horne but also Duke Ellington, as well as the dance of Katherine Dunham and company, is of top quality.  In 35 millimeter it should be irresistible.  

Ten Nights in a Barroom (1926) stars Charles Gilpin who is also known as the first star on stage of Emperor Jones at the Provincetown Playhouse in the early 20s. A great actor. Hallelujah! directed by King Vidor (1929) is also a stunning film for its musical and dance performances as well as the chase scene at the end on location with a very young and perky Nina Mae McKinney in the lead role.  Singers Victoria Spivey and Daniel Haynes also giving strong performances.  

Within Our Gates (1920)

Symbol of the Unconquered (1920)

Birthright (1939)

Body and Soul (1925)

The Exile (1931)

The Girl From Chicago (1932)

Murder in Harlem(1935)

Underworld (1937)--16 mm

Swing (1938)

Richard Norman's:

The Flying Ace (1925)

The Bull-Dogger (1921)

Spencer Williams:

Go Down Death (1944)

The Girl in Room 20 (1946)

Juke Joint (1947)

King Vidor, Hallelujah! (1929)

Jack Kemp, Miracle in Harlem (1948)

Edgar G. Ulmer, Moon Over Harlem (1939)

Frank Peregrini, The Scar of Shame (1929)

Powell Lindsay, Soul of Sin (1949)

Ten Nights in a Barroom (1926)

 Vincente Minnelli, Cabin in the Sky (1943)