WITHIN OUR GATES

 WITHIN OUR GATES: 1920, 79 mins.  Director: Oscar Micheaux Cast: Evelyn Preer (Sylvia Landry), Flo Clements (Alma Prichard), William Smith (Philip Gentry), Charles D. Lucas (Dr. V. Vivian), William Stark (Jasper Landry)

Within Our Gates was an unquestionable candidate for inclusion into the National Film Registry if for no other reason than it bears the distinction of being the oldest surviving film by a Black director. Its predecessor, The Homesteader, predates it by a year but that, alas, has been lost to time. But Within Our Gates is a precious artifact for far more influential reasons. It is one of the few surviving pieces of the prolific career of director Oscar Micheaux, a trailblazer in every sense.

One name out of a flurry of Black filmmakers to emerge upon the end of the Great War, Micheaux had been telling the story of his struggles before film was even thought of as an option, writing and selling stories in South Dakota where he experimented as a homesteader. Film gave him a new medium and his body of work has remained the standout of what would come to be termed “race films” of the early 20^th century.

This despite the fact that a large portion of his oeuvre has been lost in the same manner a lot of early cinema was lost. In the case of Micheaux, an entire career has nearly vanished through nitrate degradation. Within Our Gates, an invaluable survivor, offers clues to the style and direction of one of cinema’s first auteurs.

The film is a complex, almost Dickensian, narrative with many layers, innovative narrative devices, and a sizeable roster of characters. Sylvia, a sweet young woman played by Evelyn Preer, drives the story. After her life falls apart while staying with a cousin up north, she leaves for the rural south to help a failing school intended to prop up the Black residents of the area. When she realizes how dire the financial situation of the school looks she returns to north to solicit an endowment. Here the film appears to become disjointed from where it began. The jealousy of Sylvia’s cousin who sabotaged her engagement, her cousin’s slimy step-brother who lusts after her and the compromising position Sylvia finds herself in through her cousin’s treachery all seem to fizzle out inconclusively, but Micheaux weaves it all back in seamless fluidity by the end.

In the meantime, the film shifts to address the questions many Black Americans were asking themselves in the early 20^th century. Micheaux draws a distinction between the Blacks who remained in the south and the ones who sought a better life in the industrial cities of the northern states. This disparity is also explored among the White characters, Micheaux reminding us that the dichotomy is not as clear as the north would like to pride itself.

For instance, Sylvia is eventually able to secure funds to save the school from the generosity of a Boston socialite, but not before the benefactor’s mind is almost changed by her snooty girlfriend, a southerner now living in Boston, her resentment so steep she is fighting against the 19^th Amendment, willingly sacrificing her own right to vote in order to prevent the same right to Black women. The socialite eventually honors her promise to Sylvia, but Micheaux’s reminder that even well-meaning Whites can be misled by persuasive sounding bigotry stands.

As Anna Siomopoulos observes in The Birth of Black Cinema, “But the racial reversals in the plot of the film are not the only challenges that Within Our Gates poses to Griffith’s film. Within Our Gates also counters Birth of a Nation in the politics of its aesthetics, specifically in its very different use of parallel editing. Griffith’s film uses cross-cutting to present a very simple opposition between white virtue and black villainy; in contrast, Micheaux’s film uses a complex editing pattern to present a larger social vision of many different, competing positions within both white and African American society.”

Micheaux’s harshest condemnation, however, is for traitors like the treacherous Efrem (E.G. Tatum) who endangers the lives of his own people to ingratiate himself to White mobs, and Old Ned, the unscrupulous Black reverend who preaches complacency to his Black assembly while secretly collecting bribes from Whites determined to keep them down.

 Dr. Vivian (Charles D. Lucas), a medical student in Boston who ultimately wins Sylvia’s heart, and Rev. Jacobs, who runs the crumbling school for Black children make for a revealing comparison. Both men embody the divergent philosophies offered by two Black leaders at the time. In the former Micheaux seems to have placed the ideas of Booker T. Washington while in the latter the teachings of Marcus Garvey. Both men, as did their historic counterparts, see education as the key to the path forward but Dr. Vivian’s emphasis is on patriotism. Micheaux’s decision to end the film with the triumph of this philosophy puts the film ideologically implicitly in Washington's camp.

Although the brutal lynching of Sylvia’s parents depicted through a flashback invert the horror of the murder of Gus in Birth of a Nation, the influence of Griffith on Within Our Gates is overstated. More than a rebuttal, Micheaux wanted to tell the story of his people in film for his people by his people, this explaining the title more than any other aspect of the film.

This entailed the establishment of Micheaux’s own production company and while he would come to sport many hats, this precluded Micheaux the budget offered by the larger film production companies. Getting the film made was only part of the struggle. Releasing and distributing the picture proved equally as challenging as many cities (notably Chicago, which was still reeling from the race riots of the previous summer) were reluctant to allow the film a run, at least before some cuts were made.

Despite these obstacles and financial restraints, Micheaux persevered and Within Our Gates was seen widely enough to have an impact. What it lacks in cinematic polish it more than compensates for with a pointed vision. Its multiple angles, both of the narrative and topical kind, tell a story that only a mind like Oscar Micheaux’s could tackle. While one would give much for more of his filmography to turn up, and it may as Within Our Gates itself was thought lost until a print was discovered in Spain in 1979, Within Our Gates is something of an overall testament to his contribution to cinema.

SOUTH

 

SOUTH:1919, 80mins.     Director: Frank Hurley

South, assembled from the footage shot by Frank Hurley on his fateful voyage to Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton on the Endurance, began life merely as a documentation of the voyage, the ice and wildlife of the South Pole. History turned it into an account of survival.

In July of 1914, with the backing of the government, Shackleton, accompanied by a crew of twenty-seven men including renowned Australian photographer Frank Hurley and some seventy dogs, left England to finish what his fellow countryman Robert Falcon Scott had tragically failed to do two years earlier; reach the Antarctic and return home with footage and specimens of the expedition. Scott and his men perished, Shackleton who, unlike Scott, was not burdened by a race to the Pole against the Norwegians, lost not a single man and his tale of heroism became a national motivator in the age of Antarctic Exploration.

Indeed, the outlook must have looked bleak when the Endurance, already trapped in pack ice, began to succumb to pressure winds, eventually crumbling to the bottom of the Weddell Sea. After surviving on provisions, Shackleton left 22 of his men on Elephant Island and made his way to a whaling station in South Georgia Island where he was able to solicit help for his crew.

If South is not as harrowing an experience as such a tale would suggest it is because much of it is the film Hurley initially set out to make; a documentation of the ice caps and marine life. It wasn’t until the crew became stranded that his focus shifted to the daily ordeals.

On film the crew appears determined and optimistic, but what were they really thinking as they are stoically digging through the ice or playing with the dogs? Was this where they were going to die once the supplies ran out? For that matter, what was Hurley’s real motivation behind the camera? Was his footage to be the only way to know their story once their frozen carcasses were discovered?

South was not assembled until three years after the rescue and it recounts the experience through the eyes of survivors. The whimsical footage of penguins and elephant seals, along with drawings standing in for footage Hurley couldn’t film, was spliced together years later, when the dread had subsided and it became easier to smile at animal antics. If the film does not quite grip us and lacks a sense of urgency as we see the situation becoming more hopeless by the day it does provide some striking images of the Antarctic at a time when many nations were racing to stake out the mysteries of the Pole. It works best as a capsule, being an impressive early documentary.

After its initial run in 1919, however, South was rarely seen in its entirety. In 1996 a restoration began which was met with praise when the finished product was screened in 2000. In 2022 it went under another polishing up, which added tinted colors and a beautiful score, and South was brought to life in a way that Frank Hurley would have been proud of.