#371: MICHEAUX, Oscar: Body And Soul (1925) / MACPHERSON, Kenneth: Borderline (1930)
PAUL ROBESON: PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST {Spine #369}
Body And Soul [1925]
MacPHERSON, Kenneth (United Kingdom)
Borderline [1930]
MacPHERSON, Kenneth (United Kingdom)
Borderline [1930]
Spine #371
DVD
DVD
Although the 1920s brought him acclaim as a stage actor and singer, Paul Robeson still had to prove himself as a viable screen performer. Mainstream avenues were limited, however, and his first two films, both silent, were made on the peripheries of the film business. Body and Soul, directed by the legendary African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, is a direct critique of the power of the cloth, casting Robeson in dual roles as a jackleg preacher and a well-meaning inventor. Borderline, the sole feature of British film theorist Kenneth Macpherson, boldly blends Eisensteinian montage and domestic melodrama, and features Robeson and his wife, Eslanda, as lovers caught up in a tangled web of interracial affairs. With these first independent works, Robeson revealed his stunning and expressive on-screen physical presence and laid the groundwork for what would become a history-making career.
Body And Soul
79 minutes
Borderline
75 minutes
Black & White
Silent
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2007
Body and Soul
Director/Writer
The Film
Some filmmakers who succeed with a debut of a low-budget, inventive piece of cinema, never achieve the same success once they are given bigger budgets. You know who you are.
One can only wonder if the Black Oscar Micheaux might have done better with a Chaplin- or Griffith-type budget — but we have this film that definitely proves that he was a genius working with what little he had.
It would be many decades before another filmmaker — of any color — would make a film with as inventive a structure as this one.
Robeson is the gift that keeps on giving. He plays a dual role here as both the good guy and the bad guy. And it is to his credit that the viewer — even if he couldn’t read the intertitles (which was likely the case for many Blacks at the time that this film was presented) can distinguish clearly between Robeson’s two roles — his facial expressions are amazing and not at all the wild characterizations and gesticulations of many silent stars of the White cinema.
Mercedes Gilbert is Sis’ Martha and does wildly gesticulate (it befits her character) while Julia Theresa Russell (sole IMDb credit) as Isabelle is demure and subtle.
The other minor characters are all beautifully fleshed out (Lawrence Chenault as “Curley Hinds” is the light-skinned Black bad guy — a casting that never would occur to a White filmmaker) and equally fascinating is Marshall Rodgers as the “Negro in business” who runs the bar — Booker T. Washington (whose photograph is prominently displayed in Sis’ Martha’s home) would not have approved — but yet the Rodgers character is constantly preyed upon by the other “bad guys” who are even worse than him …
**
We are so lucky to have such a beautiful restoration of this film from an era long removed from our own.
The Nighmare [Henry Fuseli 1781]
The Extras
The Booklet
The Booklet
76-page booklet:
- A Modern Man, by Clement Alexander Price
- In the Beginning: Oscar Micheaux and Body and Soul, by Charles Burnett
- Cast and Credits
- About the Transfers
Burnett on Body and Soul:
“For me, discovering the films of Oscar Micheaux was like first witnessing a man walking on the moon — if only I could have recorded my own shock and delight for posterity. Learning about this pioneering African-American filmmakers was revelatory and, in a sense, humbling, because in the sixties and seventies a group of us naively thought that, outside of Ossie Davis, Sidney Poitier, and Melvin Van Peebles, we were the start of the black independent movement. The sheer volume of films he directed — over forty — made us realize that there had once been a black audience used to seeing black images.”
Commentary
A brilliant commentary …
“One the writers of the Harlem Renaissance stated that ‘we wanted always to appear “butter-side up”’ — meaning the purity of us; don’t show the underbelly. But Micheaux was forever dipping down into the community, not only for the underbelly, but he also wanted that surface goodness that was there, because you can’t deny that there’s no human society that doesn’t have good people and bad people and a lot of people in between — if you want to give a sense or portrait of those individuals, you have to deal with all of it.”
Musical score
By Wycliffe Gordon.
An absolutely brilliant score, full of gospel feeling, and underpins the whole film with gravitas.
Borderline
Director/Writer
Macpherson (left)
The Film
Experimental — yes! — but a little jumbled, too. You could understand why the Robesons would want to be involved, but the whole thing is a little discombobulated.
Robeson is Pete, married to Adah (Eslanda Robeson). She seems to be having an affair with Thorne (Gavin Arthur) who is married to Astrid (“Helga Doorn” or HD or “Hilda Doolittle,” you decide …)
There is a fight which results in a death, involuntary manslaughter; and there is an old woman (Blanche Lewin) who thinks the world would be better off without any Black people (she uses another phrase) …
Macpherson was apparently involved in a threesome with HD and another woman. HD (also a poet) and Ezra Pound were good buddies/lovers.
Perhaps the best (modern) thing about this film is the awesome soundtrack by Courtney Pine — in addition to the usual jazz instrumentation, he also writes for strings …
Film Rating (0-60):
54
The ExtrasThe Booklet
76-page booklet:
Extras Rating (0-40):
- A Modern Man, by Clement Alexander Price
- On the Edge: Robeson, Borderline, and the Forgotten Avant-Gardes, by Ian Christie
- Cast and Credits
- About the Transfers
Christie on Borderline:
“Borderline is an early example of the ‘artist’s film,’ where we see leading figures from other media using film in quite different ways from professional storytellers, in a tradition that stretches from Man Ray and Hans Richter in the twenties to Yvonne Rainer and Matthew Barney today. In many ways, Borderline was ahead of its time, as it tried to marry Pabst’s psychological realism to Eisenstein’s aspirations for montage as a truly new language of cinema”
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