The Complete Oscar Micheaux: Body and Soul (1925) with short film The Darktown Revue (1931)
Director: Oscar Micheaux Run Time: 93 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1925
Starring: Julia Theresa Russell, Lawrence Chenault, Marshall Rogers, Mercedes Gilbert, Paul Robeson
Country: United States
Language: English
The Complete Oscar Micheaux, presented from Thursday, September 19—Saturday, September 28, 2024. The program concludes with a limited engagement of the 2021 documentary Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking on Sunday, September 29.
About the film:
A bold and controversial film by pioneer independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, Body And Soul (1925) marked Paul Robeson’s screen debut and was the only motion picture he made with an African-American director. The film has been restored in 4K by the George Eastman Museum.
Robeson plays a hard-drinking thief and vicious womanizer who poses as a pastor in a small southern town. Through this diabolical ruse, he preys upon a young member of his flock, not unlike the murderous minister of The Night Of The Hunter (1955). The film’s depiction of clergy was deemed so incendiary that at least one prominent Black newspaper refused to even mention the film in its column. In fact, Robeson never discussed the film in public, partly because it offered not-so-veiled criticism of the two Eugene O’Neill plays in which he had just starred.
“Robeson radiates the roguish charm and dangerous looming ferocity of a master con man with a scary streak of violence. Like his singing, Tobeson’s acting has stature. It is larger than life.”
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
Body and Soul (1925) is presented with Micheaux’s first “talkie” short film The Darktown Revue (1931). With a series of long takes and frontal camera set-ups, the short film provides a record of several cabaret acts, using intertitles to separate the individual numbers. The quietly outrageous film begins with the high-toned Heywood Choir singing “Watermelon Time” and concludes with Amon Davis playing a preacher using heavy blackface. Amon Davis was known as “the Back Biting Comedian, Par Excellence,” and his sermon is one of Michaeux’s many notable send-ups of the clergy. This monumental short has been mastered from materials preserved by the Library of Congress.
About the filmmaker:
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an author, film writer and director, and independent producer of more than 44 silent films and sound films from 1919—1948. Micheaux was the first African American filmmaker to produce a full feature-length film and is regarded as a prominent producer of race films, and the most successful African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century. Micheaux’s work is not only a milestone in African American cinema, but an incredible insight into American history regarding race in society.
Born in 1884 to enslaved parents, Micheaux first left home to work for the railroads in Chicago. He had his sight set higher as a writer and a determined creative. He wrote a series of novels, including his self-published The Homesteader. Not only was Micheaux a pioneer in African American cinema, but also in independent publishing and filmmaking. After turning down offers to produce his novel into a film, he later found his own path to producing the 1919 film. Micheaux serves as a symbol of triumphing over the circumstances at hand to bring his vision to reality. The groundbreaking auteur’s features include The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), Body and Soul (1925), Within Our Gates (1920) and Birthright (1938).
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