The Green Pastures
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Movie Reviews of The Green Pastures
Movie Review: The spirituals are fine but the film is a naive caricature
Summary: 4 Stars
When we know the author of the original stories is white, the film shows perfectly well how the American society, after slavery and after - up to the 1850s - banning the Blacks from all training into reading and writing, from all speaking their original languages and even from all affiliation to any religion, rushes head first into over-Christianizing the Blacks with no cautious slowing down and with all calculated speeding up they could master after the Secession War, both south and north, though for different reasons. The objective was to cast the Blacks into the mold of the unexplainable will of God and the necessity to suffer in this world to be saved in the next one. The interest of this film cannot be found in the ethics of the story. Maybe only - at this level - in the exploration of the arcane sophistication of the alienation, imposed onto the Blacks. But the real interest is the large presence of Negro spirituals in the film, one of the very first films entirely centered on Black music, though in 1936 we must not forget we are after - and within - the triumph of the radio that enabled Black music and jazz to find a wide audience, to embed its existence and force into the widest Black and white audience it had ever had, just as it enabled F. D. Roosevelt to dominate the political arena for twelve years or so. Yet the film is tremendously deficient. The desire to have only Black actors in the film locks up the Blacks in a color ghetto. It appears as pure segregation against the whites. It does not help us much understand the great musical revolution the Blacks brought to the American continent. They live their music, their religion and their everyday life in the total absence of whites except in one scene where the whites are Ku Klux Klan members lynching a whole bunch of Blacks for no other apparent reason than the excitement of the hunt. At times the biblical stories told to us are so naive and simple-minded that we can wonder whether we are talking to people provided with a brain. The music itself is very average. Luckily this exclusively Black cinema has not been furthered beyond the few films the late 1920s and the 1930s produced. They were leading to a complete dead end as for understanding or simply reflecting the real situation in which the Blacks are living and which they may want to change. What's more the reduction of the whites to KKK members is definitely a racist caricature.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Movie Review: Politically Incorrect
Summary: 4 Stars
This is not an easy movie to write about.
Marc Connelly's play debuted on Broadway in 1930, ran for eighteen months, enjoyed a five year national tour and won the Pulitzer Prize. Unfortunately, today, it's political incorrectness and racial stereotypes makes one want to cringe.
Directed by Connelly and William Keighley, the 1936 film, which features an all-black cast, looks at stories in the Old Testament as they might be imagined by black school children living in rural Louisiana. God, for example, is referred to as "de Lawd," and takes the form of an elderly black preacher (Rex Ingram).
Perhaps the best story in this episodic fable concerns Noah and the flood. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, certainly one of the finest comedic performers of his time, plays the good man who builds the Ark.
The Hall Johnson Choir supplies lovely Gospel music throughout the picture, which is, at the end of the day, a fine piece of theatre that should be viewed as a film of its time.
DVD extras include audio commentary by actor LeVar Burton and some black cultural scholars, plus two musical shorts, one featuring Ethel Waters and 7-year-old Sammy Davis Jr., and the other with The Nicholas Brothers.
© Michael B. Druxman
Movie Review: The Green Pastures
Summary: 4 Stars
In this day and age of political correctness this film may not delight everyone as it does have stereotypical portrayals of black Americans. But it also has powerful performances by actors who rarely got a chance to really act in films or on stage. In addition it's a movie version of a historical American play, lovingly produced and for that we should be thankful.
The ancillary items could also be interpreted as racist but here again we should be happy to see, for instance, the phenomenal six year old Sammy Davis Jr, Ethel Waters and, most of all for me, the Nicholas Brothers in a Vitaphone short subject. As the Nicholas's used to say "we dance, we sing", which was a modest assessment of their great talent. Anything with the Nicholas Brothers is worth the price of admission!
Movie Review: THINK BEFORE VIEWING
Summary: 4 Stars
"Green Pastures" is an entertaining take on the stories of the Bible, with an all-Black cast. Before you merrily place this DVD into the player, take a few moments to think - about the era in which the movie was made, the racial climate of our country at that time, the relationships between blacks and whites in that decade, and particularly, the prevailing stereotypes of the time. Then reflect on how far we've progressed as a society. When you start to feel good again, THEN and ONLY THEN should you press "play." You will thoroughly enjoy the movie, laugh a lot, and you may even recognize some of the actors. And rest assured, it's OKAY to laugh, because this is ONLY art, not present-day reality or reality TV.Movie Review: youth revisited
Summary: 4 Stars
It was a pleasure te see again the film that awakened many good memories. Quality good! Dutch subtitles would have made a 5star quality judgement.
viszcher