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WITHIN OUR GATES (1919):
The first feature film by early black auteur Oscar Micheaux was thought lost for many decades, then resurfaced in South America w/ most of its visuals intact and all but four of its English intertitles replaced with Spanish translations. It was restored and translated back into English from the Spanish intertitles and from Micheaux's own archival materials, and - either miraculously or as a testament to Micheaux's strengths as a writer and director - WITHIN OUR GATES is more clear, cogent, and compelling than any other feature of its vintage, even in light of its considerable narrative complexity.

The plot essentially focuses on the adventures of Sylvia, a light-skinned African American teacher, as she visits family in the North, pursues financial support for her Southern school for poor black students, gets involved in romantic melodrama and intrigue, meets and helps illuminate the nascent consciences of some white folk, and confronts her own tragic history in the South. If Oscar Michaeux was in a screenwriting workshop, I would probably offer him feedback on clarifying his structure. For instance, Sylvia leaves the North a third of the way through the film, goes back home for a while, then comes back North for the final third of the film, which probably wasn't necessary and could've been simplified with a quick rewrite. But there are also significant narrative digressions - extensive flashbacks from Sylvia and other characters, including flashbacks within flashbacks, and also lengthy sequences that focus on peripheral characters, some of whom Sylvia doesn't even know.

Eventually I accepted the structural eccentricity of the film, which really was decades ahead of its time. Spike Lee has (perhaps consciously) recreated Micheaux's diffuse storytelling strategy, as have Tarantino, PTA, Altman, etc. But their films are all two-and-three-quarter hours, whereas Micheaux somehow fits a sprawling tapestry into 90 minutes. Not all of it is brilliant or even necessary, but many crucial sequences (specifically the ones that most explicitly depict racist attitudes and crimes against black Americans) are far superior than any other social realist cinema of the silent era. It also goes without saying (though it's been said many times) that WITHIN OUR GATES is a far more realistic document of early reformation-era race relations than BIRTH OF A NATION

, including a sobering sequence where Sylvia's family is framed for a white dude's crime and persecuted (at great length and with great vigor) by a mob that's ravenous for any excuse to vent spleen.

The film's strongest and most vivid sequence focuses on an ancillary character - a black reverend praised by a despicable white dowager as the foremost credit to his race. Micheaux cuts for several scenes to that Reverend - played by a black actor, strikingly wearing blackface - as he theatrically panders to and fearmongers his congregation, then kowtows to a pair of moneyed white guys, and then finally suffers a private moment of despair where he admits to himself that he's a charlatan, a hypocrite, and a bane to his community. This sequence ain't subtle (tho how many silent films are?) but it does demonstrate that Micheaux had an incisive understanding of the cosmology of challenges confronting African Americans, beyond obviously just the hatred of white racists. A second example of this is presented later, in the person of a free black man who apparently still aspires to the position of Sam Jackson's zero-sum-gameplaying slave from DJANGO UNCHAINED: the guy in GATES could prevent or resolve the miscarriage of justice against Sylvia's family, but instead he gleefully compounds the tragedy, delighted to protect his own influence even if other African Americans around him suffer and die. Paging Justice Thomas!

WITHIN OUR GATES is kinda' Great on its own merits, but (as befits its historical stature) it also helps me better understand subsequent films. Yes it's overstuffed, which is the same opinion I've held about most of Spike Lee's films. It was Micheaux's first film but also his most ambitious. One suspects therefore that Micheaux was uncertain whether he'd ever get another shot at making a feature and thus wanted to address every last issue that was important to him... and in fact this attitude is one that Lee has confessed to having about nearly every movie he makes, even after four decades. (Black auteurship isn't exactly a protected commodity in American cinema.) Fortunately Micheaux did get to make a lot more movies for another 30 years - but many of those movies were lost and remain lost. From that perspective, it's a blessing that WITHIN OUR GATES has been preserved as an emblem of Micheaux's vision.

Imperfect, but on a silent-era curve, it's a 5/5.

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