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 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 been lost to nitrate degradation but, 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 (like flashbacks), 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 the northern cities to solicit an endowment. Here the film appears to become disjointed from what came before. 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 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 many of the concerns and even questions Black Americans were asking themselves in the early 20^th century. Micheaux first draws a distinction between the Blacks who remained in the south and the ones who found 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 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.

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.

Micheaux’s depiction of 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. 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 the Dr. Vivian’s emphasis on patriotism, and Micheaux’s approval of this made evident by his decision to end the film joyously on this note, marks the film’s tone directly on Washington’s school of thought.

Although the brutal lynching of Sylvia’s parents in 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 wear 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 assessment of his contribution to cinema.