Within Our Gates
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| Within Our Gates | |
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| Directed by | Oscar Micheaux |
| Produced by | Oscar Micheaux |
| Written by | Oscar Micheaux |
| Starring | Evelyn Preer Flo Clements James D. Ruffin Jack Chenault William Smith Charles D. Lucas |
| Distributed by | Micheaux Book & Film Company |
| Release date(s) | January 12, 1920 (USA) |
| Running time | 79 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | Silent film English intertitles |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Within Our Gates is a 1920 silent race film that dramatically depicts the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro." The story focuses on an African-American woman who goes North in an effort to help a minister in the Deep South raise money to keep a school for poor Black children open. Her romance with a black doctor eventually leads to revelations about her family's past that expose the racial skeletons in America's closet, most famously through the film's depiction of the injustice of lynching. Produced, written and directed by novelist Oscar Micheaux, it is the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director. The film, which was written and directed by Micheaux, stars Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin, Jack Chenault, William Smith and Charles D. Lucas.
Not seen for seventy-five years, a single print of the film, entitled La Negra was found in Spain. A brief sequence in the middle of the film was lost, and only four of the original titles survived, the rest having been removed for translation. In 1993, the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center restored this film as close to the original as possible. The Spanish titles were retranslated into English by Gene DeAnna, removing any explanatory material that was added and reproducing the style that Micheaux used in his books. The missing sequence was summarized with an intertitle frame.
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[edit] Background
Two events spurred the film's creation: the release of D. W. Griffith's classic The Birth of a Nation four years earlier, with its heroic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan saving the South; and the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.
Within Our Gates was the second of some forty films directed by Micheaux. With a limited budget of just $15,000, Michaeux was forced to borrow costumes and props, and there was no opportunity to reshoot scenes.
[edit] The plot
The film opens with Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer), a young African American woman, visiting her cousin Alma in the North, while she waits for Conrad to return and marry her. Alma, however, is also in love with Conrad, and prefers to see Sylvia married off to her brother-in-law Larry, a gambler and criminal. She hides a letter sent by Conrad, announcing his arrival, and arranges for Sylvia to be caught in a compromising position by Conrad when he finally returns. Conrad storms off and leaves for Brazil, while Larry kills a man during a game of poker. With nothing to keep her up North, Sylvia returns to the South.
There she meets a minister, who runs a school for Black children. People from all over turn to the minister to educate their children and give them a chance for the future, but the school is already overcrowded, and he cannot continue on $1.49 he receives from the local government to educate each child. With the school faced with closure, Sylvia volunteers to return to the North to raise $5,000.
At first, the trip is a failure. She cannot raise the money, and her purse is stolen, though a local man, Dr. Vivian, manages to get it back for her. Then Sylvia is involved in an autombile accident when she tries to save a young child playing in the street from being hit by a large car. The car belongs to a wealthy philanthropist, Mrs. Elena Warwick, who hears of Sylvia's mission and decides to give her the money. Mrs. Warwick's friend, Mrs. Stratton, a southerner, attempts to discourage her, but this only infuriates Mrs. Warwick, who increases her donation to $50,000. The school is saved, and Sylvia can return home.
Meanwhile, Dr. Vivian has fallen in love with Sylvia. He goes to Alma, who tells him about Sylvia's past. She was raised by a poor Black family, the Landry's, which managed to provide her with an education. However, Mr. Landry is wrongfully accused of the murder of an unpopular but wealthy landlord, Mr. Gridlestone, and the family is hunted down and lynched. Sylvia escapes, but she is chased by Mr. Gridlestone's brother, who tries to rape her, only to notice a scar on her breast. He realizes that Sylvia is actually his daughter through his marriage to a local Black woman, and that he has paid for her education.
[edit] Responses
Within Our Gates was initially rejected by the Board of Censors in Chicago when Micheaux first submitted the film in December of 1919. An article in the Chicago Defender of 17 January 1920 claimed "This is the picture that it required two solid months to get by the Censor Boards." A week later the Defender reported "Those who reasoned with the spectacle of last July in Chicago ever before them, declared the showing pre-eminently dangerous; while those who reasoned with the knowledge of existing conditions, the injustices of the times, the lynchings and handicaps of ignorance, determined that the time is ripe to bring the lesson to the front." Protesters feared that the vivid lynch and attempted rape scenes would spark further interracial violence in a city still tense from the riots of July. These were the reasons subsequently given in Omaha, New Orleans, and other cities which refused permission to screen the film, or demanded that these sensational scenes be cut. Despite, or perhaps in part because, of the controversy, the film garnered large audiences in Chicago when it was released in January of 1920. Apparently the film often screened in different cut versions. For example, an article in the Defender reports that on Tuesday, February 24th of 1920, Within Our Gates "will be shown" at the States Theater in Chicago "without the cuts which were made before its initial presentation." Other evidence includes extent film stills of scenes not appearing in the surviving film copy as well as descriptions of the film by viewers which appear at variance with the film as we know it.
Today, the film is generally considered an important document of African American life in the years immediately following World War I, when racism was still rampant throughout the United States. Despite its occasional shortcomings (see below), it has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
[edit] Aesthetics
Within Our Gates exhibits the usual flaws of early silent cinema: crude production values, static camera work, melodramatic acting, and poorly coordinated plot lines. Yet early judgments that Micheaux's work lacked aesthetic finesse or artistic power now appear short-sighted. Micheaux carefully constructed Within Our Gates to educate his audience about racism, uplift, peonage, women's rights, and the urban "new Negro" emerging after the Great Migration. His movement back and forth from North to South mimics that of his antagonist, D. W. Griffith, who used the North-South marriage plot to dramatize the ideology of a white supremacist reunion of regions that would cancel the legacy of Reconstruction and leave blacks out of the national picture. Micheaux's film ends with a wedding as well, but this occurs between two sophisticated African Americans, one from the South and one from the North, who lay claim to the Nation despite its recent treatment of blacks during World War I and the violence that met the returning African American soldiers after the war.
Critics (such as Jane Gaines, Ronald Green, and Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence) also celebrate the skill with which Micheaux intercuts the lynching and burning of the Landry family with the attempted rape of Sylvia by Gridlestone (who turns out to be her father). This editing deconstructs the ideology that whites had used in justifying lynching as a punishment for the supposed sexual brutality of rapacious black men against white women. The real story, as Micheaux demonstrates, is quite the opposite, as he reminds us of the long-standing practice of sexual predation by white men against black women (which has its roots in slavery days). When one watches the film attentively, many other episodes turn out to be cleverly edited in ways that both show and deconstruct white visual traditions and white ideologies.
Notable, too, is the detailed layering of allusions to current social and political events, from the death of Theodore Roosevelt to the heroism of African American soldiers in the war to debates in the Senate over Jim Crow and peonage. The film's weaknesses may be excused by Michaeux's extremely limited budget and punishing schedule, and by the fragmentary nature of the only surviving print in which several scenes have been lost. In fact, we will probably never know what the "original" film looked like, or whether the sequencing of scenes in the only extent version is identical with what Micheaux once intended.
[edit] Representation of racism
The film attempts to portray the many different faces of contemporary African American society as perceived by the director. There are heroes and heroines, like Sylvia and the minister, but there are also criminals like Larry and lackeys like a minister that Mrs. Stafford supports, who tries to encourage the African American population to reject voting privileges. Mr. Gridlestone's servant Efram attempts to ingratiate himself with the local white population by denouncing Mr. Landry as the murderer, even though he did not actually see the crime committed. Though he celebrates his relationship with the white community, he is eventually lynched, when the mob fails to find the Landrys.
As a novelist, Micheaux recognizes the complexity of African American life, particularly in the Deep South, but he is reluctant to place the onus of blame for the impoverished condition of Blacks solely on the white population, and points to other Blacks who help to perpetuate their condition for reasons of personal gain.
Some critics have challenged what they considered to be the inherent racism that Micheaux displays in the film. In addition to his scathing critique of Black society, Micheaux seemed to prefer lighter-skinned Blacks as his heroes and heroines, and may have modelled Sylvia after characters played by Lillian Gish. In fact, Evelyn Preer, who played Sylvia, was instructed to wear chalk on her face to make herself appear lighter-skinned, and she and the other positive characters appear to be attempting to "pass" as white.
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