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Directed by Oscar Micheaux, 1935
Studio: Micheaux Pictures Written by Oscar Micheaux Cast - Clarence Brooks (Henry Glory)
- Dorothy Van Engle (Claudia)
- Andrew Bishop (Brisbane)
- Alec Lovejoy (Lem Hawkins)
- Laura Bowman (Mrs. Epps)
- Bee Freeman (The Catbird)
Oscar Micheaux, the pioneer Black filmmaker, made a few excellent films that survive today from the silent era about the African American predicament (Within Our Gates, Body and Soul, etc.). However, his surviving sound films are usually quite dismal, due to poor budgets, scripts, and action. This 1935 entry is quite good. It tells of the framing of an innocent Black man in the rape/murder of a White woman. Alec Lovejoy steals the film as the ignorant buffoon who assists the guilty man in a frame-up. The scene where the leading lady gets Lovejoy to drunkenly confess is a hoot. Some of Lovejoy's "Uncle Tom" antics may offend "Politically correct" viewers, but since he's the bad guy, it actually fits well in the story. See it and enjoy, but be warned that the sound is not that great.
Any consideration of this film must begin with the conditions under which it was made. Oscar Micheaux had almost no budget, which led to very low production values. He often could not afford to create sets (he used pre-existing locations) or to shoot more than one take of a scene. His audience was African Americans, who were often excluded from regular movie theaters by segregation laws, and certainly excluded from any reasonable sort of depiction on screen in Hollywood films. Micheaux made a living for many years as an independent filmmaker; his audience was willing to overlook the limitations of form and budget because his films provided them with the only opportunity they had to see the lives of black people on screen.
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