 |
| Paul Robeson, Julia Theresa Russell, and Mercedes Gilbert in Body and Soul |
The melodramatic imagination that crafts stories out of feelings and emotions is a precious thing, giving us an insight into the hidden lives of human beings uninflected by ideology. But the manners and behavior that grow out of these emotions change with the times, so what stirs the emotions of one generation seems ludicrous to the next, leading to an undervaluing and neglect of melodrama as an art form. Add to this a general intellectual mistrust of and contempt for appeals to the emotions, and it's easy to see why so much of the cinematic past that stemmed from this imagination has vanished, the victim of a kind of sanctioned neglect. And a special victim of this neglect would have to be the so-called "race movie," aimed almost exclusively at Black audiences. All of which makes the survival of even a deeply flawed film like Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul so remarkable. Even in its carefully restored form, it has narrative gaps and character inconsistencies that suggest still-missing pieces. But it also preserves the essence of what Black audiences of the time thought and felt about themselves, along with portrayals of the desperation of poverty, the intense and sometimes blinding religiosity, and the indomitable hope. We can fault Body and Soul for its too-facile "it was all a dream" resolution, but we should also value it for endorsing the necessity of dream as an antidote for crushing despair. Watching it 95 years later, it's easy to be distracted by its antiquity, by the title cards written in a dialect that offends us, by the florid acting -- Paul Robeson apparently later tried to hide the fact that this was his first film, even though his is certainly the most impressive performance in it. Call the film naïve if you will, but see it as its first audiences saw it, as a validation of their hopes and fears, and it can be an intensely moving experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment