Reviews - Body and Soul (1925)

March 9, 2019

Body and Soul – U.S., 1925

Sometimes a movie seems more timely and relevant simply because you chose to watch it at precisely the right moment. How else would you explain the pertinence I attached to Oscar Micheaux’s 1925 drama Body and Soul? Had I watched it a mere five years earlier, I doubt I would have seen in it a reflection of our current troubled times. Seen today however, it is nearly impossible for it not to be viewed as a harbinger of things to come, particularly because we have not heeded its warning, and the costs have been catastrophic.

Body and Soul’s lead character is a man who goes by the moniker Reverend Isiaah T. Jenkins. I say goes by because we learn in the film’s opening moments that a convict has escaped from jail and assumed that identity, a fact that apparently has not traveled to the small town of Tatesville. It is there that the story takes shape, there where we find that the fake preacher has set up shop, and there where we witness the esteem with which he is held. Interestingly, the role is played by the great Paul Robeson, a Broadway legend with such a golden voice that I’m guessing he could only play villains in silent movies.

Towards the beginning of the film, Micheaux, who also wrote the screenplay, makes an unusual choice: He elects not to show us just why Jenkins would acquire such a devoted following. Instead, the first glimpse we get of him, he’s frequenting a bar, well on his way to getting so drunk that his attempts to walk straight end with him wobbling from side to side and then veering so sharply to one side that he is momentarily off-screen. Before this, however, we watch him blackmail a local bartender into giving him both free drinks and a financial donation. His pitch: He’s thinking of delivering a sermon on the evils of alcohol.

Soon, we’re introduced to the other characters central to the film: Isabelle (Julia Teresa Russell and her mother, Martha Jane (Mercedes Gilbert). Isabelle has her heart set on marrying a man named Sylvester (also played by Robeson), while her mother will consent to her marrying no one but Mr. Jenkins. In fact, when she is asked to bless their union, Martha lets fly that most insulting of words to an African-American. Her intent: to emasculate the man. What a change there is when the preacher arrives. Her face aglow, her eyes wide with awe, she looks as one often does in the presence of one’s spiritual hero, especially if he is associated with one’s religious awakening or the act of being saved.

In his review of Leon Morin, Priest, Roger Ebert wondered why being a priest gave one the right to meet with women privately or why a woman would feel safe alone with a man simply because he was a priest. The same could be asked here, just as variations of this question could be asked regarding producers, directors, and celebrities. I don’t claim to have an answer to this question, but I believe it lies somewhere in our innate need to trust that there is someone in this world above reproach, someone with a comprehension of something beyond our present understanding, and someone whose motivations are purely benevolent. We want such people to exist, and perhaps we go overboard when we think we find them.

This is certainly the case with Martha Jane. How else could you explain her leaving her daughter alone with Jenkins despite her repeated pleas for her not to? It should be obvious now that there is a steep price to be paid for placing such blind faith in one as malevolent as Preacher Jenkins.

As much as I’d like to be able to praise Body and Soul as an early masterpiece, I’m sorry to say that I can’t. The film starts off too slowly, introduces a supporting character that ultimately serves no purpose and uses up too much screen time, and has too many scenes early on that do not move the plot forward. In fact, for the first ten minutes I wasn’t entirely sure what the film was doing, as characters seemed to be sitting around and the film cut to the next scene both far too often and far too quickly. There’s also a problem with the film’s intertitles. For long stretches of time, characters talk to each other about important things, yet there are no intertitles cueing the viewer in to their conversation. Significant moments are lost as a result. And then there’s the film’s ending, which can perhaps best be described as a cop-out in the vein of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

That said, from the moment Isabelle’s mother refuses to let her marry Sylvester to a scene in the forest in which a man is beaten to within an inch of life, the film is both riveting and shocking. It exposes the danger of blindly putting one’s faith in a stranger and demonstrates the tragedy that can befall the innocent when another’s word is given greater prominence than hers – even when disbelievers have all the facts at their disposal. And it shows just how difficult it is to accept both your moral failure and that of the person you put such faith into. In the end, Martha still wants to believe the lie. Sometimes it’s just less painful that way.

Body and Soul is a punch to the gut, a film that forces us to question why and whom we place our confidence in. It will make you reflect anew on current events, such as the ongoing child abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church, the Me Too and Times Up movements, and yes, the recent allegations against the late Michael Jackson. Body and Soul warned us. We just weren’t ready to listen yet. (on DVD and Blu-ray as part of Kino’s Pioneers of African-American Cinema)

3 stars

Miscellaneous Musings

April 6, 2017

On The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the Klu Klux Klan and Lost Opportunities

I had intended this post to be a full review of Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 film The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the Klu Klux Klan; however, writing such a review about a film that is in this condition would be the equivalent of reviewing a book that is missing every third page, as well as the final chapter. In other words, I would have been reviewing an incomplete film, one whose remaining parts are too disjointed to create a complete narrative. To give you an example of this, toward the end of the film, a man’s mother arrives, which is significant because the last time we saw her she was being savagely attacked by the very son she is now looking for. What does she now say to him to try to heal their divide and to soothe the anger that surges within him? We’ll never know. The next we see of her son he is shot during what looks to be a gunfight, but we’ll never know for sure. The rest of the scene has been lost.

There are things that can be gauged from what remains of The Symbol of the Unconquered. Themes found in the literature of the time are also found in the film. There’s a Stepin Fetchit-like character that reminds us of the conventional wisdom of the time, that even serious films like this one had to have a comedic character to make the audience’s experience a little less grim. The film also has something to say, similar to Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, about the inner conflict that the tone of one’s skin color can cause. Here, it leads one character to essentially hate who he is and where he came from and another to embrace her culture all the while knowing that many people are blissfully unaware of her identity. The two are polar opposites, and an in-depth look at these characters would prove fascinating. Alas, if such an examination existed in 1920, it sadly no longer does today.

What does exist all too often details the scheming of a few criminal characters, including an Indian man, and the henchmen they hire to spread fear and intimidation. One of these men, Bill Stanton, is said to be able to “make people do things.” His means of achieving this is the Knights of the Black Cross, which is the Klan in everything but name. In what remains of the film, we see the Knights move out. Their attack and eventual defeat no longer exist.

The film was Micheaux’s fourth, and it was released the same year as Within Our Gates, a film I liked quite a lot. Both films include moments where characters rise above the limitations that society has thrust upon them. The character of Hugh Van Allen is a hardworking, resourceful young man intent of achieving his own version of the American dream, which includes land, liberty, and the ability to prosper from his diligence. He is the kind of man who runs toward danger and who exudes the chivalry often seen in the characters frequently played by Cary Grant. And then there’s Evon Mason, a single woman determined to make it on her own. In one scene, we see her pick up a shovel and work the land. It reminded me a bit of Scarlet O’Hara after the Civil War utterly changes her life. These are characters that I can easily see an audience investing in.

Watching the film got me thinking about how incomplete our collective film history is. According to the Chicago Tribune, of the 41 films that Micheaux made, it is likely that fewer than twelve still exist; most of Chinese legend Ling-yu Ruan’s films have been lost, along with countless other Chinese-language films made prior to World War II; and who can say for sure how many films were lost in Japan during the Second World War and in Douglas MacArthur’s later purge of supposedly duplicate copies of Japanese films. Entire careers have been forgotten, as all traces of their work have disappeared. On one of the Treasures from American Film Archives box sets, the first three volumes of which are now shamefully out of print, is a preview of a lost film that claims to be the greatest film ever made. It’s quite a declaration, but we have no evidence to the contrary.

It would be reassuring to be able to say that films can no longer be lost, yet, while the technology exists to preserve most of today’s films, that does not mean that there is the will to do so. And for all the promise that going digital offers filmgoers (Remember the Quest commercial in which a hotel has every movie ever made?), there are a number of films that have yet to appear on DVD and, let’s face it, may never do so. I remember reading about a billiards movie named Chalk in 1996 and vowing to watch it on home video – never released. A movie that blew me away was 1994’s The Day The Sun Turned Cold – still not available on DVD. The same could be said of Frioriksson’s Cold Fever, Chen Kaige’s debut film Yellow Earth, Yimou Zhang’s Keep Cool (available but not with English subtitles), Nikita Mikhalkov’s Anna, Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (available in Region 2/PAL, but not in Region 1). I could go on.

Newer films are not immune from this either. Over at The Digital Bits, Adam Jahnke has just written about the curious absence of Beasts of No Nation on DVD and Blu-ray. Sure, the film can be watched on Netflix, but that’s not the same as having a physical release. One would think they would want it to be seen by as many people as possible, and limiting its available will not accomplish that. There’s also a disturbing trend of moving films that were previously released in stores to MOD. It’s not hard to imagine OOP being next.

This is one of the reasons I rail so much against lists like the AFI’s top American movies of all time. There are many more films worth watching than the standard 100 that find spots on these lists and then get stocked in the few remaining stores that still sell physical DVDs and Blu-rays. While the movie industry continues to push the notion that 100 years of American films can be reduced to 100 “masterpieces,” films that are worthy of being discovered and that may be better than the ones they are pushing on consumers are quietly being forgotten. Foreign films are faring much worse, as the number of movie theaters allocating screens for these films shrinks and fewer movies make their way to the home video market. However, a film that is not released cannot find an audience, a film that is not publicized cannot build word-of-mouth, and a studio that doesn’t hear people talking abut a movie tells itself there is no reason to release it to the public. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy, and eventually it will be too late to reverse it. Just look at all we’ve already lost .

Dr. Adam Jahnke’s column: http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/jahnkes-electric-theatre/open-along-edge-netflixs-dvd-problem

Review – Within Our Gates

April 13, 2008

Within Our Gates – U.S., 1919

Few films have as many elements and plot points as Within Our Gates. The film contains no less than thirteen pivotal characters and touches on several pertinent social issues. Historically, Within Our Gates is the oldest known feature-length film directed by an African-American. The film’s central character is Sylvia Landry, brilliantly played by Evelyn Preer. As the film opens, Sylvia, a school teacher from the South, is in the North visiting a cousin. We learn that Sylvia has recently accepted a proposal of marriage from a man named Conrad Drebert. In a letter, he makes his joy at her acceptance known. However, their future happiness is imperiled by the fact that Sylvia’s cousin Alma is also in love with Conrad, and when the opportunity presents itself, she devises a scheme to ruin their romance. Sylvia is also being pursued by Alma’s stepbrother Larry, a member of the underworld and a man who is known as “The Leech.”

With her engagement over after Conrad’s fit of jealous and extremely brutal rage, Sylvia decides to return to the South. Upon returning, she goes to work for Reverend Wilson Jacobs, the founder of a school for African-Americans. In spite of the school’s efficacy and good-intentions, it suffers greatly due to a lack of funding and is in danger of closing. Therefore, Sylvia decides to return to the North in an effort to raise enough money for the school to remain open.

So far, I have made this plot seem very simple. However, it is in fact far from it. Present-day sentiments make parts of this film difficult to watch at first. After all, what are present-day audiences to make of an intertitle that describes the Reverend’s sister as his “companion against the Negro’s ignorance”? And yet a moment later an African-American, deprived of an education by his state, arrives and relates to the Reverend his tough decision to give up everything just so his daughter could have the opportunity to be educated. The intertitle was referring a lack of formal classroom education, but that may not be the first interpretation that people have.

Another aspect of the film that sets it apart from others of its time is its evenness when it comes to heroes and villains. As in real life, they come in all genders and colors. For example, the man who attempts to rob Sylvia when she arrives in Boston is African-America, but then so is the man who prevent the robbery. Later the film introduces Mrs. Geraldine Stratton, a rich, white Southerner who smiles when she reads about a proposal to strip Blacks of the right to vote. However, we also meet Mrs. Evelyn Warwick, another rich white women but one who is sympathetic to Sylvia’s cause and may in fact be the only person who can save Sylvia’s school. I must admit though that I felt some sympathy for Mrs. Stratton. It’s hard to know what to make of someone who would deny her own right to suffrage just to keep African-American women from having that privilege.

Other characters are equally complex, and because of that, they may make some viewers uncomfortable. For example, the film introduces an African-American preacher named Ned who has the endorsement of Mrs. Stratton because as she explains it, he will “keep coloreds in their place.” More troubling is the fact that Ned stands in front of his congregation and tells them not to want equality in this life, for their reward will come in the afterlife. As he explains it, Whites will go to Hell because they have everything in this life. To make matters worse, Ned then goes to visit to white officials who ask him why Blacks cannot be content with what they have. Ned’s answer seems to suggest that they should be. To add insult to injury, one of the men then kicks Ned as he is leaving. Ned turns around and laughs with them. Once outside the office though, the smile disappears, and Ned reveals the shame that he feels at his actions. But realistically, what are his options? To stand up for himself and his race is to risk being lynched.

The last act of Within Our Gates reveals Sylvia’s youth and through this story, the danger of the time is made crystal clear. It is a time when the affluent took advantage of the poor and the uneducated, when all it took was the words of a drunken fool to set a mob against an innocent man and his family, when some whites felt they could attack African-Americans with impunity. This is the world in which Sylvia grew up, and it is clear that it has taken a toll on her. That said, the film’s final moments, in which Dr. Vivian tries to explain to Sylvia why she should be proud of her race, rings hollow. After seeing the effort she makes to save Reverend Jacob’s school, it’s clear to me that she doesn’t need a speech to instill her with pride or to give her the courage to begin a new chapter in life. That said, she certainly deserves one. (on DVD)

3 and a half stars

*Within Out Gates was released as part of Image-Entertainment’s 3-disc collection Origins of Film. That collection is currently listed as being out of print. The film is currently available at http://www.grapevinevideo.com/.