Years & Decades Flashcards
1910s
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
- Canonized the Old Types we know today (Buck, Tom, and Tragic Mulatto)
- The controversy following Birth of a Nation’s release (and characterization of the Negro as the straight through and through villain) led Hollywood to only cast black males in comedic roles.
- Cinematically untutored audiences of the early part of the 20th century responded to the character types as if they were a real thing
1920s
- Throughout the era into the 1920s, the black jester came to replace Griffith’s black villains. The all-out comic Negro was ushered in
- Whites continued to play Negro roles, and whenever they did appear it was often in a demeaning manner
- What degraded the black comic figures of the day even further and made them appear more grotesque and less individualized was that whites often still played the Negro roles
The Jazz Singer (1927) was the crowning achievement and final success of blackface
The commercial failure of many of these (black) films accounts for the 7-year interval between them and the next big black spectacle, The Green Pastures
1930s
- In the 30s, the toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks were no longer old-style jesters. They were now respectable domestics.
- With their incredible antic, unbelievable dialects, the black servants of the 30s provided a down-hearted Depression age with buoyancy and jocularity to demonstrate that life wasn’t completely hopless
- Through these roles, black actors provide that the mythic types could be individualized and made if not into things of beauty, things of joy
- The enthusiasm with which the actors approached these films mirrored their own gratitude that at long last blacks were working in film
- The best black performers played their types, but also played against them and molded themselves into nondirectorial auteurs, with their own brand
Films: The Emperor Jones (1933)–Paul Robeson & Fredi Washington
1940s
Shift in images: WWII=>Black GIs were going abroad to fight
-Postwar audiences demanded recognizable problems and issues particularly on race
Earl Dancer and Terese Harris: Acknowledged though
AA were getting roles but the types of roles were inconsiderate and degrading
Walter White: Executive Secretary of NAACP
H-Wood Began to deal with Race
Theme: Anti-Semitism
-Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947)* Won Best Picture
-1949: Year of the Negro Problem Picture
1950s
H-Wood begins to deal with teams of racism
Giant (1956)–Racism against Mexican Americans
The Negro as a social symbol takes root
Poitier becomes the showcase of the “integrationist” theme: White audiences wanted representations of the “good Negro” they want to integrate into society
1960s
Poitier was the top black box office draw. His films all dealt with integration and succeeded critically and commercially.
Integrationist dramas continued but black audiences began to grow weary of Poitier by the close of the decade in favor of more militant images.
1915
Birth of a Nation is Released
First feature film to deal with a black theme and fully articulate the entire pantheon of stereotypes
Altered the entire course and concept of American moviemaking, developing the close-ups, cross-cutting, rapid-fire editing, the iris, the split-screen shot and realistic and impressionistic writing
Revealed D.W. Griffith’s philosophical concept of the universe and his personal racial bigotry
Major “black” characters are played by white people in blackface
1914
Sam Lucas becomes first black performer on screen in the 2nd Version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1929
Hallelujah, Hearts of Dixie, St. Louis Blues are released
1934
Judge Priest
New production code of ethics prohibits “miscegenation”: Sexual relationships between black and white characters are forbidden
1942
Casablanca wins Academy Award for Best Picture
- Central character → Humphrey Bogart (Rick)
- –Runs a bar in Morocco
- –Many are very concerned about war and getting papers
- –Falls in love with woman while in Paris
- –Comes to Morocco with black friend named Sam
- —-One day, woman comes into bar/club
- —-She sees Sam, and goes to him, and says play their song
- —-He know song will get to Bogart’s emotional form
- Sam in some respects is still a servant, yet a different kind of role
- –A moral consciousness that he can help the white character
- –Seeing glimpses of Huck Finn fixation
- —-He is going to endow white character with spirituality
- —-Type of interracial male bonding
- Casablanca marks a shift in POV
In This Our Life: Hattie McDaniel in different role
1949
“NEGRO PROBLEM PICTURES”
**Hollywood returns to Tragic Mulatto theme
1) Pinky
2) Lost Boundaries
- True account of a New England Negro family that lives as whites for 20 years
3) Home of the Brave
- special mission during WWII
- fighting for his country, while having to endure the racism from some of the members on his special mission
- –initially protagonist was Jewish, but after Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement, changed him to AA
4) Intruder in the Dust
- Black man gets put on trial for murder in the South
Ralph Ellison
- Films were compromised but important, because they got at America’s emotional core
- Least Compromised film was Intruders in the Dust
1954
Carmen Jones is released–Dorothy Dandridge (first AA to be nominated for Academy Award in the lead)
1959
Second Imitation of Life is released
Juanita Moore nominated for Best Supporting Actress
1967
-Poitier stars in: In the Heat of the Night**, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner*, and To Sir, With Love
—Heat of the Night wins Best Picture
