The Darktown Revue
Pioneers of African-American Cinema • 18m
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1931
Micheaux's most outrageous film: a traditional minstrel show.
Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux was something of a firebrand, but his attitudes and methods were anything but predictable—often leveling criticism at certain strata of the African-American community. His most outrageous film is a traditional minstrel show—an olio of broad comedy and choral interludes. It is an acknowledgement of minstrelsy as a defining tradition of African-American stage performance. If nothing else, THE DARKTOWN REVUE is an invaluable historical document for recording on film the “Hard Shell Sermon” routine popularized by turn-of-the-century minstrel performer Amon Davis. But there is something else. True to form, Micheaux’s depiction of a minister is not flattering. Davis’s comic sermon of gibberish is a scathing satire of charismatic religion, made even more troubling by the fact that it is performed by a black man in blackface.
Up Next in Pioneers of African-American Cinema
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The Exile
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1931
The earliest surviving sound film by an African-American.
The immediate historical significance of THE EXILE is that it is the earliest surviving sound feature by an African-American filmmaker. Watching it, one immediately detects a change in Oscar Micheaux...
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The Flying Ace
Richard E. Norman • United States • 1926
A rural crime drama about rival aviators.
A rural crime drama revolving around a pair of rival aviators, THE FLYING ACE illuminates the fact that many films made for African-American audiences were less concerned with race than with making popular entert...
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The Girl from Chicago
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1932
Exploring the cultural rift between the urban and the rural.
A remake of Oscar Micheaux’s now-lost 1926 silent film The Spider’s Web THE GIRL FROM CHICAGO is another film that explores the cultural rift between the urban and the rural, set in both Harlem an...
