J Paul Johnson
It took only a century or so, but the collected works of Oscar Micheaux are now complete—as complete as they can be, at least—and available in their best quality possible courtesy of Kino Classics and the Library of Congress. A new five-disc Blu-ray collection arrives just in time for Black History Month, packaging together all of Micheaux’s available films, seven of them newly restored. Together, the collected films serve as testament to the director’s artistry and perseverance and make an unparalleled aesthetic and ideological statement.
A self-taught independent maverick who worked entirely outside the Hollywood systems of production and distribution from which he was, because of his race, excluded, Oscar Micheaux made himself, though his will and talent, the most influential Black filmmaker of the 20th century—at least, that is, until his groundbreaking work paved the way for later talents like Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, Sidney Poitier, Julie Dash, and Spike Lee. Barnstorming the country, brainstorming stories, fundraising on shoestrings, and seeing through his final productions to “theatrical exhibition” that often amounted to little more than folding chairs in church basements or unheralded midnight screenings in dilapidated theaters, somehow Micheaux managed, against all odds, to write, direct, and produce more than 40 films—more than half of which are, sadly, today considered lost forever.
Micheaux’s was a remarkable story. Born on an Illinois farm and with his parents migrating to urban Chicago, he later left city life to become a homesteader and then, later a storyteller, first as a writer (he would eventually write seven novels) and then—without any apprenticeship or training—a filmmaker in a nascent medium. A lack of formal education or support system left him undaunted, and he adapted his first novel, The Conquest, based on his personal experience, to film in 1919 as The Homesteader. Premiering in Chicago, it became a modest success: his talent as a storyteller was exceeded only by his apparently inexhaustible work ethic and salesmanship.
The Homesteader is lost to history, but Micheaux’s second feature film, Within Our Gates (1920), leads off Kino’s collection of his surviving films with one of seven new restorations. (An earlier restoration had been included in the company’s prior Pioneers of African American Cinema collection from 2015.) Within Our Gates is generally considered Micheaux’s most important work, an implicit rebuttal to the ubiquitous racism of society, the industry, and works like Birth of a Nation. It’s a stunning whirlwind of a melodrama focusing on the class aspirations of a set of Black professionals and their tribulations—with no shortage of love, sex, violence, revelation, and retribution in the mix. Micheaux was careful to present his characters—his people, the Black bourgeoisie—as human, with all their attendant frailties and foibles and subject to the segregation of the day. Yet they were never second class.
Body and Soul (1925) is, in part as the debut of Paul Robeson in the lead dual role, is Micheaux’s other best-known film. Like Within Our Gates, it too suffered censorship in many areas for its depiction of Black Americans as free and equal (if separate) citizens working for better lives. The extant film is the result of a significant censoring, from nine reels to five, but it is, at least, coherent and in this also-new restoration (this film too had been remastered for the Kino Pioneers set, with a score by DJ Spooky), in excellent quality. Micheaux would survive the transition to sound and continue to make films, though like many a filmmaker’s, his talkies suffer somewhat in retrospect from their stilted dialogue and awkward cinematography.
Micheaux never really had the benefit of working with trained film actors or crew. He was known to cast roles at a glance and rarely could afford the luxury of a reshoot. Even in a film some 20 years into his career, like God’s Step Children (1938), there are inexplicable cuts, out-of-place extras, inconsistent lighting and sound design, and some stilted acting, even from his wife and frequent star, Alice B. Russell. The plot is one of passing, not too unlike, say, the first Imitation of Life (1934), yet without the stars, the budget, the spit-polish, and shine of that film’s big-studio production. And yet God’s Step Children has its own charm, its tale told for, by, and with Black people. That these films exist today, given their production history and limited exhibition, serves for one thing as testament to Micheaux’s indomitable will as a financier and filmmaker; for another, to the impenetrable segregation that pocked the industry for the better part of the 20th century.
Each of the five discs in Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection presents multiple of Micheaux’s extant features and shorts, sometimes alongside a few theatrical trailers, and the sole supplements: brief five-to-seven-minute introductions by series curator Rhea L. Combs, interviewed in a theater and complemented by clips Micheaux’s films. Each introduction covers the changes in society, industry, and technology Micheaux faced, especially during the conversion to sound and the later devastation of The Great Depression. Though they may total only about 25 minutes together, the introductions provide an excellent and informative context for the wide variety of films the set collects.
And what a variety that is, as Micheaux mined a wide array of genres during his career: there are crime films, nightclub musicals, performance revues, melodramas, actioners, sports films. The set collects, along with the aforementioned Within Our Gates, Body and Soul, and God’s Step Children, the following of his films, not to mention a handful of trailers, including ones for the lost films Harlem After Midnight and Temptation:
The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the Ku Klux Klan (1921, 59m): Remastered in 4K from materials preserved by the Cinemathêque Royale de Belgique and featuring what might be the director’s most stunning visual sequence—a Klan raid at night—Symbol of the Unconquered is a melodramatic love story set in the Northwest. Shot in black and white and tinted in color (all of the other films in the set are in black and white).
The Darktown Revue (1931, 18m): Micheaux’s first talkie, an all-Black musical revue featuring blackface comedian Amon Davis.
The Exile (1931, 78m): Remastered in 2K by the Library of Congress, The Exile also adapts portions of Micheaux’s novel The Conquest. It is thought to be the earliest surviving sound feature by an African American filmmaker.
The Girl from Chicago (1932, 70m): A remake of Micheaux’s lost 1926 silent film The Spider’s Web, punctuated by what were becoming the director’s trademark: punchy musical numbers illustrating the spectacular song-and-dance skills of his cast.
Ten Minutes to Live (1932, 58m): One of Micheaux’s more aurally and visually expressive outings, a proto-noir based on one of his short stories, remastered here in 2K by materials preserved by the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art.
Veiled Aristocrats (1932, 44m): Another talkie remake, this of Micheaux’s lost silent The House Behind the Cedars, and like God’s Step Children, a narrative of passing with a light-skinned black woman at the center. Restored in 4K by the George Eastman Museum.
Murder in Harlem (1935, 95m): Restored in 4K from materials provided by multiple archives, this remake of Micheaux’s 1921 silent The Gunsauler Mystery is based on a true-life tale, that of the murder of teen factory worker Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of suspected murderer Leo Frank.
Underworld (1937, 76m): Remastered in 2K from materials preserved by the Library of Congress, this crime drama suffers from a deteriorated soundtrack; subtitles are inserted where the dialogue is inaudible.
Swing! (1938, 68m): Remastered in 2K from materials preserved by the Library of Congress, this backstage musical features Cora Green as a singer and musician aiming for the big time.
Birthright (1939, 73m): Remastered in HD from materials preserved by the Library of Congress, Birthright, based on a novel by T.S. Stribling, offers up one of Micheaux’s most stinging critiques of segregation and Jim Crow.
Lying Lips (1939, 73m): Remastered in 2K from materials preserved by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lying Lips‘ crime story features an entertainer, Elsie, in the grip of the Italian mafia—played entirely by Black actors.
The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940, 72m): Also remastered in 2K from materials preserved by the Library of Congress in an extensive digital restoration aimed to restore a badly damaged soundtrack, The Notorious Elinor Lee is one of the collection’s gems: Micheaux’s final surviving film, starring Robert Earl Jones (James Earl Jones’ father) as a heavyweight contender and Gladys Williams as the titular gangster moll ready to sell him down the river.
Micheaux’s were not tales of poverty, of the ghetto, of slavery, or of the past. Diverse as they were, they took a singular approach in depicting the lives of middle-class Black Americans: professionals, teachers, doctors, lawyers, entertainers. They too suffered, experiencing strife and trauma. Yet it would be a generation or three before other Black filmmakers could begin to chart the full panoply of African American experience. Micheaux was an upwardly mobile, ambitious professional who courted the patronage of others—with some degree of money and prestige—like him to support his narrative goals. In doing so, he aimed to tell the stories of Black people who were neither down nor out but living through a very different experience than the white folk whose lives were more typically the subject of cinematic narratives.
All told, Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection features nearly 1000 minutes, or about 16 hours, of screen time dedicated to the most accomplished and prolific Black filmmaker of his era—in some ways, the only Black filmmaker of his era, remarkably accomplishing the impossible in a time when segregation was so ubiquitous it prevented any kind of inclusion or equity. And even then, to think that perhaps twice as much screen time of Micheaux’s as this remains, likely forever, lost.
Kino’s presentation of Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection makes for a worthy catalog of the director’s extant works. The discs are packaged in a single five-fold jewel case with a 12-page booklet featuring restoration and cast/crew notes. It’s a fairly Spartan package, to be frank, for such an undertaking. A biography of Micheaux or a longer essay about his work would make for a nice supplement. So too would the recent Cannes-premiering documentary Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking, directed by Francesco Zippel and featuring interviews with Chuck D, John Singleton, Kevin Wilmott, Amma Asante, Jacqueline Stewart, and Morgan Freeman. But that’s being reserved for its own separate DVD release by Kino Classics.
Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection earns its value not for its packaging nor its supplements, though, but for its content. That it collects so much of Micheaux’s work is in itself the reward. One hopes that at some point in the future, that this collection is less than complete—that Kino and other restoration and distribution experts keep at it and unearth, somehow, somewhere, even more of Micheaux’s long-thought-lost tales of trial and tribulation.
Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection releases February 11, 2025, from Kino Classics.
