The Politics and Poetics of Black Film , livre ebook

The Politics and Poetics of Black Film
STUDIES IN THE CINEMA OF THE BLACK DIASPORA
THE POLITICS POETICS OF Black Film
Nothing But a Man
EDITED BY David C. Wall Michael T. Martin
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The politics and poetics of black film : Nothing but a man / edited by David C. Wall and Michael T. Martin.
pages cm. - (Studies in the cinema of the black diaspora)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography.
ISBN 978-0-253-01844-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01850-2 (ebook) - ISBN 978-0-253-01837-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Nothing but a man (Motion picture) 2. Race relations in motion pictures. 3. African Americans in motion pictures. I. Wall, David C., editor. II. Martin, Michael T., editor.
PN 1997. N 5678 P 85 2015
791.43 72 - dc23
2015017067
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
TO OUR BELOVED MOTHERS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Nothing But a Man and the Question of Black Film David C. Wall and Michael T. Martin
FILMMAKERS STATEMENTS
Michael Roemer
Robert Young
ESSAYS
Demanding Dignity: Nothing But a Man Bruce Dick and Mark Vogel
Nothing But a Man Thomas Cripps
The Derailed Romance in Nothing But a Man Karen Bowdre
Can t Stay, Can t Go: What Is History to a Cinematic Imagination? Terri Francis
Civil Rights, Labor, and Sexual Politics on Screen in Nothing But a Man Judith E. Smith
INTERVIEWS
Historicity and Possibility in Nothing But a Man: A Conversation with Khalil Muhammad Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
Cinematic Principles and Practice at Work in Nothing But a Man: A Conversation with Robert Young Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
SCREENPLAY
Nothing But a Man
PRESS KIT
from Cinema V Distributing (1965)
FILMOGRAPHIES
Michael Roemer
Robert M. Young
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
AS IS ALWAYS THE CASE WITH A PROJECT SUCH AS THIS, THERE are many thanks to be made to those without whom it would not have come to fruition. We must acknowledge the Black Film Center/Archive ( BFC / A ) at Indiana University, Bloomington, which hosted the Cinematic Representations of Racial Conflict in Real Time symposium in the spring of 2010 from which this book, as well as the series Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora of which it is the first volume, derives. Equal thanks must go to Indiana University for their awarding of a New Frontiers grant to the BFC / A without which the symposium itself would not have been possible. As we have gone through the process of putting this volume together, many people have committed their time and energy in countless ways in an effort to ensure the quality and relevance of the contributions herein. This includes those anonymous external reviewers whose supportive comments encouraged us to continue with the project. At Indiana University Press, Robert Sloan and David Miller have given us endless support and advice as they have shepherded the manuscript through to publication. Their patience with the progress of the book (as well as us!) has been exemplary. This is equally true of copy editor Karen Hallman who has unfailingly offered both sage advice and sound direction whenever called upon. Dr. Alexa Sand, Dr. Christopher Scheer, Dr. Rachel Middleman, and Dr. Laura Gelfand offered much constructive and productive criticism of our introduction in its early stages and their sharp eyes and wise counsel are much appreciated. Thanks must go also to Adele Stephenson whose compelling artwork is to be found on the cover. Lastly, our greatest thanks must go to the filmmakers Michael Roemer and Robert Young for their unceasing efforts on behalf of the project. Their personal contributions give unique insight into one of the most significant independent films of the period thus adding immeasurably to the contributions of the other commentators and contributors. It would be a much lesser volume indeed without their work and involvement. They have also been unfailingly kind and supportive in their conversations and support throughout the process and endlessly willing to allow us to use images and materials it would have been otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to acquire. We hope that this book in however small a way will serve as a lasting testament to their work.
The Politics and Poetics of Black Film
Introduction: Nothing But a Man and the Question of Black Film
David C. Wall and Michael T. Martin
THE QUESTION OF WHAT PRECISELY CONSTITUTES BLACK FILM is a vexing one. Even the way the question is worded can affect how we might frame our considerations and come to our conclusions. What is black film? is, after all, a very different question to what is a black film? In considering this critically important issue, it might seem odd to turn to the work of two white filmmakers but, in many ways, a black film made by whites serves as a peculiarly productive point of departure. In view of that, this volume concentrates on a classic of American independent cinema, Michael Roemer and Robert Young s Nothing But a Man (1964). It is an extraordinary film that is, at one and the same time, a romantic melodrama, a neorealist expression of the class struggle, a radical examination of racial subjectivity, a celebration of the nuclear family, and a dissertation on black masculinity. It reveals a complicated concatenation of racial and cultural discourses that weave through the film and swirl around its production, dissemination, and consumption.
That a category such as black film should exist is itself testament to the volatility of those systems of knowledge that structure American discourses of race. From its earliest inception, American film was implicitly and explicitly raced as white. The repertoire of black caricatures, stereotypes, and distortions that cavorted across the landscape of nineteenth-century American culture made an almost seamless transition from stage and page to celluloid. One of the earliest narrative black representations on screen was a twelve-minute version of Uncle Tom s Cabin (1903) made by Edwin S. Porter, and it should come as no surprise that the black characters were all played by white actors in blackface. Comic shorts were especially popular and catalogs of available films were replete with titles such as Watermelon Contest, A Nigger in the Wood-pile, Prize Fight in Coon Town , and The Gator and the Pickaninny . 1 Thus, reflecting and reinforcing the extant vectors of racial representation, early film played a profoundly important role in articulating a normative whiteness to a mass audience.
Though it was clearly already a ubiquitous feature of early silent film, the ineluctable linkage between the language of American race and the language of American cinema was only fully forged in D. W. Griffith s epic Birth of a Nation (1915) where, as James Snead has it, film form and racism coalesce into myth. 2 In short, as it established itself as a formalized system of economic and artistic production, Hollywood became institutionalized as white. Any black presence was relatively minor and mostly confined to acting in a service capacity within the industry or by performing those roles - servant, mammy, laborer, comic relief, etc. - that cemented a cinematic grammar of blackness designed to validate the extracinematic hierarchy of race for white audiences.
One of the consequences of white Hollywood s refusal to allow black Americans to play any significant part in the nascent film industry was the development of a parallel industry of race movies, produced specifically for black cinema-goers and featuring productions with largely all-black casts and frequently black-themed stories. Though Birth of a Nation became the cinematic Ur -text to which black film had to respond, African American filmmakers had been working since the earliest days of cinema, producing movies that covered the full spectrum of black social experience. Film companies came and went, sometimes making only a single feature before disappearing, while others, such as the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and the Foster Photoplay Company proved more durable. Oscar Micheaux, one of the most well-known and prolific black filmmakers of the early period, managed to sustain a career - albeit frequently patchy at best - from the silent days through the emergence of sound and into the 1940s.
Though the aesthetic quality of race movies was both derided because of, and explained away by, a lack of time, resources, and money, it is worth bearing in mind Clyde Taylor s argument in respect of contemporary black film that the triumphs of independent cinema must be appreciated within their imperfections, even because of them, as they stand opposed to the perfections of Hollywood. 3 Not least of these