Word: micheaux
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...Thus began one of the most bustling, inspiring, preposterous and sustained bursts of misdirected energy in movie history. Over the next 30 years, Micheaux helmed about 23 silent films and 17 talking pictures. A full-service auteur, he typically adapted one of his own novels for the screen, directed it, produced it and released it. He financed the films by showing a previous work and a synopsis of his next project to exhibitors, friends, strangers on the street and the occasional Negro businessman. And when the film was ready, he peddled it theater door to theater door. (Sometimes...
...Many of these films were lost for decades, then recovered and restored; many are still missing. But enough are extant - and available from the resourceful archivists at Facet Multimedia - to give ample evidence of Micheaux's social fervor, his rudimentary story-telling technique and his peculiar views on uplifting the Negro race. Micheaux's films must be seen to be disbelieved. But for a full understanding of movie history and film style, black history and American history, they surely must be seen...
...silent Micheaux films I've seen are not poorly made. And unlike most films aimed at blacks, Micheaux's were movies about blackness (sort of - I'll get to that shortly). The 1925 "Body and Soul," which I discussed in my last That Old Feeling column, has a robust narrative that nearly matches the charismatic presence of Paul Robeson as a preacher who charms, abuses and steals from his congregation of womenfolk. "The Symbol of the Unconquered" (1921) is a rambling, mostly charming love story about a black man who loves a light-skinned black woman but is afraid...
...over he filmed the scenario of a light-skinned women passing as white, and a dark-skinned man ignoring a women of his own shade to aspire to that wan princess. Her lightness put her atop the hierarchy of virtue or, at least, of perceived romantic appeal. Like Griffith, Micheaux's feminine ideal seemed to be prim, virginal Lillian Gish; he insisted that his actresses wear chalk makeup to make them seem whiter, lighter - Gishier. "The first offense of the new film is its persistent vaunting of intra-racial color fetishism, "wrote the black critic Theophilus Lewis, reviewing...
...Edward Wood may be the Worst, but Oscar Micheaux is the Baddest - with all that that implies. ... Scenes climax in a cubist explosion of herky-jerky jump cuts wherein an actor appears in a succession of slightly askew angles. ... Actors play multiple roles, some characters seem blessed with precognition while others get marooned in alternate universes. ... Lines are delivered in unison, there are awkwardly failed attempts at overlapping dialogue, some actors appear to be reciting by rote or reading cue cards.... Left stranded in scenes that are grossly overextended, his performers strike fantastic poses, stare affectingly into space, or gaze...