I’d previously seen the world premiere of this restored
version of Oscar Micheaux’s major work at the BFI with Peter Edwards and Nu
Civilisation Ensemble whipping up a storm and this screening, complete with
jazz composer Wycliffe Gordon’s soul-pleasing ensemble score, was the perfect entrée
to the tenth Hippfest! It’s hard to believe that a year ago we were all
waiting, hotel booked, tickets at the ready, for our trip to Bo'ness and the start
of the most perfectly formed silent film festival in Scotland’s first purpose-built
cinema. Covid had come though and the show couldn’t go on but gradually it resumed
with streaming shows and thousands online connected in virtual silent communion
with Clara Bow and John Barrymore.
Restrictions still in place this year’s festival is
online only but features fulsome introductions, inspired new music and after
show Q&As utilising the benefits of the medium in much the same way as last
autumns Giornate: digital is different but there are ways in which it
allows more detailed examination of the content as well as maintaining the
engagement of communal viewing. Flexible Hippfest also allows you to schedule
your viewing around work, family and lockdown exercise whilst still making you
feel involved in a unique, well-curated experience. You simply have to take a
seat, chose between say Laphroaig and Glenlivet, click your clicks and watch
away…
According to Charles Musser in Race Cinema and the Colour Line – an essay in the BFI’s Pioneers of African American Cinema box set – Paul Robeson disowned this film, which is a shame as he is superb playing two characters: utterly convincing as the homicidal pretend priest Reverend Isaiah T. Jenkins as well as his decent “twin” Sylvester. Robeson felt he had been duped by director and writer Oscar Micheaux who used this film to humorously critique tropes from plays about black culture written by white writers and in which he had featured.
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| Paul Robeson |
Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The
Emperor Jones along with the now obscure Nan Bagby Stephens’s Roseanne
had all featured Robeson and helped establish him as a stage force. But the
actor seemed unaware of Micheaux’s agenda until after the film was made or
possibly unaware of the impact it would have on his future prospects. Maybe the
lure of cinematic popularity was too great to resist or at least the potential
profit share, especially at a time, as Professor Charles Musser pointed out in
his introduction, when theatre was still considered the more legitimate art.
Robeson is so very watchable though, a handsome and
energetic presence who switches from the good brother Sylvester to the bad seed
Isaiah with ease. He’s an escaped convict who makes a living fleecing his
deluded flock in order to support his gambling and drinking. Robeson even makes
a good drunk, staggering around his house in the early hours applying ice to
his temples with the urgency of lived experience.
Micheaux has form in terms of spoofing organised religion
with the boorish, Uncle Tom preacher of Within Our Gates pre-dating
Robeson’s “Reverend” Jenkins’ drunk sermonising in this film. He also paints
the congregation as either bored or complicit in the ecstatic distractions of
the Holy rolling… in his view perhaps not so different from the bars and
gambling dens the gangsters inhabit. He hits his targets over the head but his
sense of humour is there throughout and you can see it in the performance of
his actors who look so relaxed and unafraid to push the emotional boat out.
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| Mercedes Gilbert |
Mercedes Gilbert is an example as Sister Martha Jane in many ways the story’s centre as the mother who falls prey to the Reverend’s lies and criminality. There’s a lot of swooning but there’s also a glint in the eye as she addresses the audience through the most outrageous elements – tragedy and comedy so closely aligned. Her daughter, Isabelle, is well played by Julia Theresa Russell who is both frail and brave refusing to buckle under the physical domination of the rotten Reverend.
Lawrence Chenault provides a suitably twisted turn as
'Yello-Curley' Hinds, Jenkins’ former cellmate who spies his pal preaching with
his beady, evil eyes. Chenault has a good deal of stage make-up prompting my daughter
to suggest he may even be in white face… now, that’d be a turn up wouldn’t it!
Other caricatures echo earlier Micheaux films with
Marshall Rogers as a sleazy speakeasy proprietor and with a delightful double
act of Lillian Johnson as "Sis" Caline and Madame Robinson as
"Sis" Lucy, two Pious Ladies of excitable disposition. The clichés
were no doubt all true – they always are - and these folk would have been
recognizably real to their audience.
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| Julia Theresa Russell |
It’s Robeson’s show though as the “Reverend” Jenkins
slips further and further down the slope to eternal damnation as his
booze-funding church con runs into extortion, sexual violence and ultimately
murder. It’s an emotionally controlled as well as physically dominant
performance as he towers over his victims whilst ultimately succumbing to his
own ability to wield force; his body never enough to save his soul.
This restoration remains far shorter than the original
nine reeler and something has been lost in parts of Micheaux’s complicated
story which, according to Musser, many felt was the fault of cuts made by white
censors. That said, he suggests that this does the director a discredit as he
is narratively ambitious, cross-cutting throughout whilst also working his story
backwards and forwards through flashbacks and dreams. Is the story one great
flashback leading up to the headline at the start of the film regarding Jenkin’s
arrest or is it more likely that that was what happened to him before these
events… a drunken recidivist, doomed to forever repeat the same mistakes?
Wycliffe Gordon is an experienced composer, educator and
band leader and here he deploys sixteen musicians on a score that moved
dramatically with and around the action. It really was a Micheaux-mix of
muscular jazz styles that, whilst occasionally appearing to run ahead of
the game, was very forcefully bound to the spirit on screen. The director cuts
very quickly and Gordon wisely decided to stick to his themes across Oscar’s
multiple lines with deliciously sleezy smooth modern jazz indicating Jenkin’s
intentions whilst gospel themes reflected his religious “mask” and his audience’s
willingness to believe.
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| Methodists don't drink |
The music was always in flow, morphing without losing
purpose with disjointedly judgemental New Orleans’ trad as the Reverend experienced
his stumbling hangover, which suddenly softened as Sylvester meets his sweetheart,
then tightened up as we switched to 'Yello-Curley' playing cards in the
speakeasy. This film is a challenge for any composer and I loved Gordon’s sweet
energy and cohesive orchestration; if he were still alive it would get the
Oscar approval, I’m sure!
This is just the start of a festival that features only
high-quality films, today there’s Merian C. Cooper’s classic documentary, Grass:
A Nation's Battle for Life (1925), as well as what promises to be a
sobering and fascinating talk on Scottish Cinema and the Flu Pandemic of
1918-19. There’s nothing new save for that which has been forgotten and we’re
here to – collectively – recall and celebrate.
Full details are on the festival website; it’s a
snip at twenty notes. There’s Scottish pricing for you!
You can also catch up on Body and Soul via this
link.
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