Friday, October 25, 2024

NFR Project: 'Betty Boop in Snow-White' (1933)

 


NFR Project: ‘Betty Boop in Snow-White’

Dir: Dave Fleischer

Animation: Roland Crandall

Premiere: March 31, 1933

7 min.

Next to Disney, the Fleischer Studio was the premier animation studio of the silent and early sound eras. Formed in 1929 by brothers Dave and Max, they created challenging and adept cartoons that leaned into the surreal and macabre, sparking many a child’sfantasies and  nightmares.

Their technical innovations – combining live action with animation, rotoscoping, and layering planes of action to give a 3-D effect – were combined with whimsical characters and absurd situations. Their biggest success was Popeye the Sailor; the next most memorable was the nifty Betty Boop.

Betty Boop was a brunette flapper-girl with a high, squeaky Brooklyn accent, fun-loving and kind, and unbearably sexy in a cartoony way. She and her allies, Koko the Clown and Bimbo the mutt, had wild, wide-ranging adventures.

Here she is Snow White, four years before Disney’s feature film version. She comes in out of a cold winter landscape to the castle of the grotesque-looking queen, who’s just asked her magic mirror if she’s fairest of them all. (Bimbo lays out a pair of long underwear at her feet, and out of a pocket pops a little creature that looks like Mickey Mouse! – hmmmm.)

Soon the mirror changes its tune, the queen gets mad, turns into a witch, and orders Snow White’s execution. Betty’s pleas soften the hearts of Koko and Bimbo, and she escapes. Koko, in the voice of Cab Calloway, sings “St. James Infirmary” as the witch changes his into a spirit. Eventually, the witch becomes a dragon and pursues the trio. It takes Bimbo turning her inside out to resolve the conflict.

The film can be attributed most definitely to the work of its animator, Roland Crandall. It is his transmogrifying imagination that morphs and mutates the character and their surrounds, making a dream world that grabs you and pulls you in. It would be decades before animation would get as adventurous again.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sons of the Desert.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

NFR Project: 'She Done Him Wrong' (1933)


 

NFR Project: ‘She Done Him Wrong’

Dir: Lowell Sherman

Scr: Harvey F. Thew, John Bright

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Alexander Hall

Premiere: Jan. 27, 1933

66 min.

Mae West was, in the parlance of her time, a temptress and a vixen. In today’s world she would be seen as incredibly liberated – and would probably still cause as much of a fuss as she did in her heyday.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1893. Her father was a cop. She was a performer from her youth, but she rapidly developed an outlook and a persona that stood out. She had a snappy style, she was funny, and she could write. Soon she developed, produced, wrote, and directed the play Sex, which got her sent to jail for six days for corrupting the virtue of New York.

She thrived on the publicity, and kept it up. Her suggestive and bawdy plays were hits, especially 1928’s Diamond Lil. It was this property that was turned into She Done Him Wrong.

Her persona was rough and tumble, a woman who had seen the worst in men, and who deigned to overcome them and live life on her own terms, sexually frank, available only to those she wanted – the complete opposite of what the well-brought-up young lady was taught. She cracked wise out of the corner of her mouth, her double entendres ricocheting around the room.

In this film, she is the lady Lou, songstress at an 1890’s beer hall. (West belts out three sexy songs, quite provocatively, during the film.) She is queen of the joint, and she juggles the many men in her life without breaking a sweat. The plot, such as it is, concerns illegal activity around the place and the police effort to squelch it. Lou, dripping with diamonds, knows all the principals in these transactions, but manages to keep above the fray.

Now what could be wrong with such a story? It’s full of dirty jokes, for one, as many as West could get past the censors. (It is said that this film triggered the strict enforcement of the Production Code.) The first shot we see of Lou is the completely nude painting of her over the bar – a gentleman’s head blocks the pubic area. She is constantly putting the make on a young Cary Grant, who plays a social reformer. She is relentless.

Ultimately, no one could handle her sexual candor, and her films became more and more tame, controlled buy the studio. She was kicked off radio for a sexy “Adam & Eve” skit she performed with Charlie McCarthy. Her opportunities dried up, so she turned to writing and to llive appearances. She was still performing, and making suggestive comments, in her 80s.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Snow White.

Thursday, October 17, 2024

For Halloween: The top 100 horror films

 Hello! Since I wrote my books about horror films, people ask me what my favorite horror films are. These are many and mostly weird. I like such oddball choices as Island of Lost Souls, The Tingler, Society, Vampire Circus, and Quatermass and the Pit

However, when it comes to a definitive list, I was definitely scratching my head. Finally, I created a Top Ten for each decade of the horror film. Put these lists all together, and you have what I consider to be a pretty comprehensive assemblage of 100 films you can explore to your heart's content. 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1920s

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920)

Destiny (1921)

Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Waxworks (1924)

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The Cat and the Canary (1927)

The Unknown (1927)


TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1930s

Dracula (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

M (1931)

The Mummy (1932)

Freaks (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

King Kong (1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Mad Love (1935)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1940s

The Wolf Man (1941)

Cat People (1942)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Dead of Night (1945)

Hangover Square (1945)

Isle of the Dead (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Bedlam (1946)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1950s



The Thing (from Another World) (1951)

It Came from Outer Space (1951)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Godzilla (1954)

Them! (1954)

Night of the Hunter (1955)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

(The Horror of) Dracula (1958)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1960s

House of Usher (1960)

Jigoku (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Psycho (1960)

The Innocents (1961)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Kill, Baby . . . Kill! (1966)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1970s

The Devils (1971)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Wicker Man (1973)

It’s Alive (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Deep Red (1975)

Suspiria (1977)

Eraserhead (1977)

Halloween (1978)

Alien (1979)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1980s

Friday the 13th (1980)

The Shining (1980)

The Howling (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Videodrome (1983)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Aliens (1986)

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

Near Dark (1987)

They Live (1988)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1990s

It (1990)

Misery (1990)

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Candyman (1992)

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Scream (1996)

Cure (1997)

Funny Games (1997)

I Stand Alone (1998)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE OUGHTS

American Psycho (2000)

Battle Royale (2000)

The Cell (2000)

Audition (2001)

The Others (2001)

28 Days Later . . . (2002)

May (2002)

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

The Host (2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE TEENS



I Saw the Devil (2010)

John Dies at the End (2012)

We Are What We Are (2013)

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Green Room (2015)

Raw (2016)

Get Out (2017)

It Comes at Night (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017)

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

NFR Project: 'The Power and the Glory' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Power and the Glory’

Dir: William K. Howard

Scr: Preston Sturges

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: Paul Weatherwax

Premiere: Aug. 16, 1933

76 min.

The real story here is the debut of the brilliant screenwriter, Preston Sturges. He was destined to be the creator of screwball classics such as Christmas in July, Hail the Conquering Hero, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. However, he got his start as a serious New York playwright.

He went to Hollywood to make money. He did, but he was unhappy with the group writing process of the time, in which draft after draft was tinkered with by successive waves of itinerant screenwriters on a studio’s payroll. Sturges wanted to be the sole author of a film. So, he sat down and dreamed up The Power and the Glory, and wrote out not a synopsis, as was common, but a complete shooting script.

The head of Fox Studios, Jesse Lasky, paid Sturges handsomely for the script and, for the first time, gave him a percentage of the film’s profits. The remarkable agreement they cemented allowed Sturges to attend the development and making of the film, giving him a valuable education in producing and directing.

The film is unique for its time in that it uses a number of non-chronological flashbacks to tell its story. The studio was so impressed with this device that they dubbed it “narratage” and put up a plaque recording this fact at the theater where the film premiered. Decades later, film critic Pauline Kael would make the argument that this device presaged and perhaps inspired Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane script, which certainly bears parallels with this film.

It's the story of a rich, mean dead guy (Spencer Tracy, who ages from his 20s to his 60s in the film, pretty convincingly). Everybody speaks badly of him after his funeral. His only defender is his childhood friend and business secretary, who walks us with reminiscence back through the hidden details of the tycoon’s life.

He starts off as an unambitious, happy-go-lucky track walker for the railroad. He falls in love, gets married, and his wife (Colleen Moore) urges him to educate himself and rise in the company. He becomes a designer and developer, rises higher and higher, finally becomes the head man. He grows hard and uncaring, all business.

Then he falls for a young socialite, leaves his wife, gets remarried. In a plot twist that wouldn’t be allowed later due to the Production Code, his adult son impregnates his wife. The tycoon finds out about it and kills himself.

This fairly turgid proceeding is innovative in the way in which it is told. However, the themes of ambition and betrayal are familiar melodramatic devices. Tracy shows off his range in the film, and Colleen Moore, a silent comedy star, handles the role of his wife ably. James Wong Howe’s beautiful cinematography helps too. Altogether, a rare example of mature movie art of a kind that soon would no longer be made.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: She Done Him Wrong.

Sunday, October 13, 2024

NFR Project: 'King Kong' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘King Kong’

Dir: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Scr: James Creelman, Ruth Rose

Pho: Eddie Linden, Vernon Walker, J.O. Taylor

Ed: Ted Cheesman

Premiere: March 2, 1933

100 min.

“Listen, I’m going to make the greatest picture in the world! Something that nobody’s ever seen or heard of!” – Carl Denham, Kong’s captor

It makes the impossible plausible. It makes a towering monster out of an 18-inch figure. It still confounds first-time viewers with its bold storytelling and astonishing special effects. One of Hollywood’s best movies still stands the test of time.

The film’s premise can be attributed to a dream of Merian C. Cooper’s. Cooper, an adventurer and movie maker, had with his partner, cinematographer Ernest B. Schoedsack, made several outstanding silent-era documentaries. (One of them, Grass (1925), is also on the National Film Registry list.) Cooper dreamed of a giant ape on top of the Empire State Building, fighting with airplanes. From this titanic climax, the story wrote itself backwards to its beginning.

Daredevil documentary film producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) has a secret map, and a secret mission in mind. He’s going to make a new documentary on an unknown island, a film that will surpass anything ever seen. He hires a ship and crew, and prepares to head out to this undisclosed location.

One last-minute problem vexes him – he wants a beautiful girl to come along, to appear in the film. He can’t get any self-respective actress to sign on. Desperate, he searches the city streets, and finds a young, impoverished woman, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). He convinces her that he is on the up and up, and she joins the expedition.

On they travel, exposing the developing relationship of Ann and Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the ship’s first mate. (We are unfortunately given a stereotyped Chinese cook.) Denham reiterates his movie as being about “Beauty and the Beast.” Finally, moving slowly through the fog, they hear the sound of breakers – only it’s not breakers, it’s the sound of drums.

They go ashore, finding a native village at the foot of an enormous wall that separates their peninsula from the rest of the island. There, the natives worship Kong. (Once again, racial stereotyping abounds, as these are bone-in-your-nose, gibberish-spouting Africans, led by the great character actor Noble Johnson, who does his best with the nonsense he has to recite.)

Of course, they want the white woman. No deal; the group returns to the ship. The natives, under cover of darkness, kidnap Ann. They open the enormous entrance set in the wall, tie her to two posts, and retreat to the top of the wall. A gong is rung, and out of the jungle comes . . . Kong.

It took a team of technicians and artists to create the effects that worked so wonderfully. Cooper and Schoedsack recruited the great stop-motion pioneer animator Willis H. O’Brien (already a known quantity due to his 1925 The Lost World, a dinosaur tale inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel) and his team, including Buzz Gibson and Marcel Delgado, to craft and operate miniatures in a convincing manner. By carefully positioning the elements to be animated, and moving them slowly, frame by frame, they could enliven their models on film and even endow them with personality.

But stop-motion was just the beginning of the production. Miniatures, matte painting, rear projection and more were combined with the aid of an optical printer. The resulting coordination of all the special and live footage so that it not only didn’t appear ludicrous, but absolutely swept the audience up with the illusion, was complete.

Any any rate, Kong makes his enormous appearance. He takes Ann and strides off into the jungle. The movie/ship’s crew go after her, equipped with rifles and special gas bombs. They run across various prehistoric creatures, and are massacred. Only Denham and Driscoll survive. Driscoll steals Ann back from Kong, and the two make it to the ship. Kong, enraged, smashes the wall and attacks everyone, killing many. Only Denham’s gas bombs get to him and put him to sleep.

We swing quickly to a marquee – “KING KONG Eighth Wonder of the World” – and the bustling Broadway crowd entering the theater. Backstage, Ann and Driscoll discuss their pending marriage. Kong is revealed, bound on a platform in steel chains. News photographers crowd forward, shooting off flashbulbs. Kong becomes enraged, breaks his chains, and goes berserk, searching for Ann.

The film’s climax shows him creating havoc across the city, grabbing Ann, and climbing the Empire State Building. There he staves off attacking Army planes for a time, but an excess of bullets leaves him bloody and weak. He plunges off the tower to his death. “So the planes got him,” a policeman says to Denham. “No, it was Beauty killed the Best,” he replies.

Kong can be interpreted in many ways – Kong as an outsized caricature of a Black man, Kong as Nature overpowering the modern world, Kong as a king made into a slave who regains his kingly crown only in the moments before his death. He is a noble creature, whatever other layers of meaning you choose to impose on him. You kind of love the big ape, and you are still rooting for him after all these years, though you know what his fate will be.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Power and the Glory.

Monday, October 7, 2024

NFR Project: 'The Invisible Man' (1933)


 NFR Project: ‘The Invisible Man’

Dir: James Whale

Scr: R.C. Sherriff

Pho: Arthur Edeson

Ed: Ted Kent

Premiere: Oct. 31, 1933

70 min.

In many ways, The Invisible Man is James Whale’s most audacious horror film, visually and otherwise. Despite the plaudits for Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Old Dark House, there is something desperate and unsettling about its protagonist’s precipitous descent into homicidal madness that is more compelling than the rest; it is eerie, uncanny, downbeat.

Its bold visual palette includes extraordinary special effects that bring the story to convincing life. Special effects artist John P. Fulton came up with ingenious techniques to make it seem as though an invisible man was plausible. Scenes were shot against a dead-black background, the actor completely covered in black, only his clothing and accoutrements filmed as normal. When printed against a positive print of the background, the figure vanishes, making the disembodied objects come to life.

Whale was fortunate in that he hired the excellent playwright R.C. Sherriff to adapt H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel for the screen. Sherriff is best known for his World War I play Journey’s End, which Whale directed and which led to his hiring by Hollywood. Sherriff adhered closely to the original, and created a pithy, expressive, and sometimes even humorous script.

The actor chosen to play Jack Griffin, the rouge scientist, was the then-unknown Claude Rains. It was vital for the man playing Griffin to have a strong and articulate voice, given that most of his performance would be communicated verbally, without benefit of expression. Rains was the man for the job. Born a Cockney, he quickly trained himself out of his lower-class accent and became one of the supreme speakers of the English stage.

The movie starts off in England’s provinces. A man struggles through the drifts of a daunting snowstorm, finding his way to an isolated inn. The locals are all gathered in the bar, whiling away the time, when the man enters. His face is covered in bandages, his eyes obscured by dark glasses. He seems more mummy than man.

He requests a room, and privacy. He is conducting experiments frantically, trying to find “a way back.” When confronted by the locals, he loses his composure, angrily stripping off his clothes and tormenting them in his invisible form. We learn through efficient exposition that Griffin discovered the secret of invisibility – but that, unknowingly, he injected himself with monocaine – a substance that drives its users mad.

The film’s razor-sharp editing gives us tantalizing glimpses of the invisible Griffin even as we are being fed his backstory; we are up to speed when he goes frantic and starts threatening those around him. He begins to kill without concern. He dreams of ruling the world in his invisible state, he rants about his power, suffers delusions of grandeur. Those close to him attempt to dissuade him and bring him in, but he grows more bloodthirsty, killing the weaselly informant that sets the police on him.

Whale has fun with the provincial setting that opens the film, portraying the local inhabitants as not too bright. As the country becomes alerted to the fact that an invisible man exists, all manner of people volunteer their own foolproof methods for catching the invisible man. Eventually, the powers that be catch up with Griffin, leading to his death – before which he exclaims, “I meddled in things that man must leave alone,” which was to become the familiar refrain of the mad scientist.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: King Kong.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, October 6, 2024

NFR Project: 'Gold Diggers of 1933'

 

NFR Project: ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’

Dir: Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley

Scr: Erwin S. Gelsey, James Seymour, Ben Markson, Daid Boehm

Pho: Sol Polito

Ed: George Amy

Premiere: May 27, 1933

90 min.

This third of the Busby Berkeley-involved musicals if 1933 is the most distinctive, in that it’s a musical that tries, however briefly, to deal with the problems of the Great Depression.

This particular plot is so familiar it has been parodied several times on stage (“Dames at Sea”) and on film (“Movie Movie”). Four young gal pals – the nice girl, Polly (Ruby Keeler); Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, ang Ginger Rogers – are trying to make it big on Broadway. Producer (the cigar-chomping Ned Sparks) has his show attached for lack of funds, and all of them are on the outs.

But wait! A young man’s voice can be heard from the next window in the apartment building, belting out a wonderful song. Eureka! From this material a great musical could be made. But where to get the money? Fortunately, songsmith Brad (Dick Powell) is rich, and he backs the show. This raises the ire of his protective older brother (Warren William), who tires to sabotage his burgeoning romance with Polly. Trickery and mistaken identity carry us through to opening night, which turns out to be a smash hit, and one that finds all of the principal couples together at last.

The distinctive musical numbers by the great choreographer Busby Berkeley are evenly spaced throughout the movie, starting with a vibrant rendition of coin-clad maidens chanting “We’re in the Money.” Once again, these are fantastic sequences that soon move beyond their stage-bound limitations and fly into sequences that could only be capture on film.

“Pettin’ in the Park” gives the filmmakers a chance to get a bunch off girls wet, then watch them disrobe in silhouette. “The Shadow Waltz” includes neon violins. Finally, “Remember My Forgotten Man” tries, in a sincere way, to talk to the fact that millions of men were out of work and in need. It’s a notably downbeat finale.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Invisible Man.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

NFR Project: 'Footlight Parade' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Footlight Parade’

Dir: Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley

Scr: Manuel Seff, James Seymour, Robert Lord, Peter Milne

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: George Amy

Premiere: Oct. 21, 1933

102 min.

Another great Warner Brothers musical. It’s another backstage affair, the plot of which factors in the new appeal of talking pictures, and the assertion that stage entertainment is superior, as demonstrated in sequences that, ironically, could only be realized on film.

Jimmy Cagney gets away from his gangster persona here, playing a song-and-dance man trying to make out in a new economy, right in the middle of the Great Depression. Perhaps Broadway doesn’t want musicals, but movies could feature live-entertainment prologues to selected pictures (an actual practice that persisted for years). These he produces, with the help of his long-suffering secretary, played by Joan Blondell, a dance director played by Frank McHugh, and a couple of opportunistic money men (Guy Kibbee and Arthur Holl).

Into this mix gets tossed the juvenile romantic team. Dick Powell plays the handsome young tenor, and Ruby Keeler plays a prim secretary who decides to let her hair down and go on the stage again. All these forces come together when another production company keeps stealing all their ideas, and they must rehearse intensely in secret in order to take the theatrical world by storm – staging three premieres in one night, at three different theaters, to sign up the owner of a chain of movie theaters (Paul Porcasi).

This they do, and how. The song-writing team of Warren and Dubin, still hot from the success of 42nd St., wrote “Honeymoon Hotel” and “Shanghai Lil,” while the team of composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Irving Kahal, wrote the rest.

The real catalyst for this genre-changing film is the four dance numbers staged by Busby Berkeley, also lauded after his work on 42nd St. The inventive and visionary choreographer extended his work with intricate patterned dancing with extraordinary camera shots – from above, mainly, but below and through and around his dance corps. He shot carefully, using only one camera so that no one else could re-edit his work.

Each musical number quickly moves beyond the limitations of a stage show into a cloud cuckoo land of outright fantasy. In the first number, newlyweds Dick and Ruby check into the hotel of the titles, dancing in ensemble with a crowd of others who are all registered under the name of Smith (a nod to the obvious hanky-panky going on). Famed little person Billy Barty is here, as a strangely disturbing child.

“By a Waterfall” is easily the showstopper of the night. Again, Dick and Ruby cavort, this time on an elaborate soundstage woodland, pierced by streams and chutes of water. Before you know it, woman in dazzling swimsuits are diving, swimming, posing, floating in and out of intricate patterns.

The film’s closing number, “Shanghai Lil,” is noticeable primarily for its showcasing of Cagney’s singing and dancing talents. He’s quite good, and when his character is forced to take the leading man’s role at the last second, he jumps right in and deservedly gets the spotlight. (Ruby here is Shanghai Lil, another instance of Hollywood “yellowface”.)

Of course the kids triumph, the business is saved, and Cagney realizes what a fool he’s been and gets together with Joan Blondell. In the depths of the Depression, anything that was cheery, like this film, was a welcome respite from the harsh realities of daily life.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Gold Diggers of 1933.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

NFR Project: 'The Emperor Jones' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Emperor Jones’

Dir: Dudley Murphy

Scr: DuBose Heyward

Pho: Ernest Haller

Ed: Grant Whytock

Premiere: Sept. 29, 1933

76 min.

Another problematic entry. It is a record of a great central performance in a great American play. It is also irredeemably racist.

The Emperor Jones tells the story of Brutus Jones, a lowly Black Pullman porter who schemes his way into power. After killing a man, he winds up in prison, and escapes after killing a guard. He takes over a backwards country in the tropics, and begins lording it over the natives. Finally they, tired of his oppression, revolt. Seeking to make his escape, Jones flees through the jungle. As his pursuers grow closer, he begins to hallucinate, reliving past portions of his life, as he slowly loses his grip on reality.

The great American playwright Eugene O’Neill premiered this play in 1920, anchored by a great central performance by Charles Sidney Gilpin. The play, O’Neill’s second, was his first big hit. However, Gilpin objected to the extensive use of the n-word in the script, and changed it to “Negro” in his performances. When the play was revied in 1925, Paul Robeson was chosen to be the leading man.

Robeson was an American phenomenon. An academic and athletic star, he earned his law degree before devoting his life to acting and singing. His powerful baritone voice, expressive face, and husky frame made him a natural leading man.

O’Neill’s play is in essence a monologue interspersed with flashbacks and visions; for the screenplay, adapted by DuBose Heyward, who is best known for writing Porgy and Bess, made the plot linear instead of impressionistic, as was O’Neill’s approach. This removes some of the incantatory intensity of the original, but it delineates a rise and fall expertly.

The director, Dudley Murphy, had previously made shorts starring Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith, as well as earlier experimental films; this experience was thought to qualify to treat this subject. Seeking to work outside the structure, and strictures, of Hollywood, the film was produced by two individuals and filmed on East Coast sound stages.

The problem at the film’s heart is this – can white writers and directors tell Black stories with any authority? For instance, censors declared that it was not to show a Black man killing a white man, so that moment was excised. In addition, actress Fredi Washington was forced to wear blackface, lest she be mistaken for a white woman (Washington was relatively light in color). In an atmosphere like this, how can an enlightened creation take place?

Jones is written as a powerful and three-dimensional character, but he is still a Black man perceived through a white sensibility. The extensive use of the n-word, and the tendency to see Black culture as an inherently inferior imitation of white culture, now distract from the genuine drama to be found in the film.

The most powerful part of the film is its end, when Jones is on the run, which is closest to the form and spirit of the original play. Robeson is amazing in the title role, moving from smooth self-assurance to outright, screaming frenzy at the end. For all its flaws, Jones is invaluable for preserving his performance.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Footlight Parade.