Within Our Gates
Oscar Micheaux, USA, 1919o
Longtemps inconnu, puis redécouvert et conservé dans les années 1990, ce film a contribué à faire du réalisateur Oscar Micheaux le précurseur légendaire que l’on connaît aujourd’hui. Un précieux tableau de la vie moderne noire aux États-Unis, mais aussi une virulente dénonciation de l’intolérance raciale séculaire pour laquelle le pays est bien connu.
With a brisk and sharp-edged style, Micheaux sketches a wide view of black society, depicting an engineer with an international career, a private eye with influential friends, a predatory gangster, devoted educators—and the harrowing ambient violence of Jim Crow, which he shows unsparingly and gruesomely. Along with his revulsion at the hateful rhetoric and murderous tyranny of Southern whites, Micheaux displays a special satirical disgust for a black preacher who offers his parishioners Heaven as a reward for their unquestioning submissiveness. Micheaux’s narrative manner is as daring as his subject matter, with flashbacks and interpolations amplifying the story; a remarkable twist regarding Sylvia’s identity, slipped in at the end, opens up a nearly hallucinatory historical vortex.
Richard BrodyGalerie photoso
