This and that...

             Before I get to my discussion of the Liberation of L.B. Jones, Dr. Revels posed a few questions that I think I should discuss regarding White Trash. It is a movie with more titles than viewers. The film is known as La Joven, The Young One, and White Trash. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, and it is filmed entirely in English without subtitles. The film is based on the story Travelin Man, by Peter Mathiesen. From what I can tell, this is an obscure art house film; however, everyone who has seen it, essentially, thinks it to be a fantastic film. It has a %100 rating on Rotten Tomatoes (with only 8 reviews). The South Carolina setting seems more convenient than anything. This film convinces the audience of the genuine hatred that the white men have for Traver, but there are no convincing accents and the setting seems less South Carolina and more California at some moments. Italian director Bunuel filmed and released the movie in Mexico, although it made its way to the United States. As best I can understand why this film did not make more of a public impact, I am convinced that the subject matter and the less than famous cast made it a non-commercial appeal. Sex and race were not mainstream in 1960. However, I think the film's economy of dialogue and the fact that Bunuel was a foreign director, one who made only two English language films, had as much to do with its obscurity as its controversial subject matter. Another Bunuel quote:

"One of the problems with The Young One was its anti-Manichean stance, which was an anomaly at the time, although today it's all the rage . . . Once upon a time, the movies reflected the prevailing morality very closely; there were the good guys and the bad guys, and there was no question of which was which. The Young One tried to turn the old stereotypes inside out; the black man in the movie was both good and bad, as was the white man."

How wonderful! A discussion, if not confirmation, of some of my insights. For Bunuel, this concept of plot diverging from the prevalent and accepted morality of an era (1960) makes this film a problem.  The complex issues of good and evil and the layers of character development with protagonist, antagonist, antihero, and villain simply may have made this movie ahead of its time. I am confident that there was no reaction to this film within the African-American community because few African-Americans saw this film in 1960. And fewer still may have seen it to date. Thank you Luis Bunuel for giving me something to work with.

And now for the Liberation of L.B. Jones. Like Black Like Me, I feel this is a film where the social commentary interferes with the plot. In order to relate a message, characters and storyline are clouded by intentions. I found this Variety Magazine review from 1970 to be humorous in its brevity:

"This story of a glossed-over Negro's murder by a Dixie policeman is, unfortunately, not much more than an interracial sexploitation film.

Story kicks off as Lee Majors and bride Barbara Hershey come to live with Majors' uncle Lee J. Cobb, while Yaphet Kotto comes home to murder bestial cop Arch Johnson. Roscoe Lee Browne is town's Negro funeral director, the title character who seeks a divorce (the liberation) from unfaithful wife Lola Falana. Her lover is Anthony Zerbe, Johnson's police buddy.

The well-structured plot [from the novel The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones by Jesse Hill Ford] finds lawyer Cobb trying to avoid an open-court revelation that a white married cop is a Negro woman's lover."

That is the entire review. After reading it again I should probably restate my initial assessment above. The plot is twisted and complicated and quite good, adapted well from Ford's novel, but the characters themselves never receive the up close and personal human exploration that we need. Lee Majors and Barbara Hershey might be the dullest characters of any film, using a few scenes and lines here and there to be the liberal conscience that Lee Majors character lacks. What you miss from this review is the interaction of all the characters. The most complex and revelatory characters from this film are Cobb, Kotto, and Browne. As the funeral director Browne is stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to divorce his unfaithful wife. As a black man, he has every right to divorce his wife; however, even Cobb does not take kindly to the notion of exposing a civil servant (the cheating police officer) as an interracial infidel. Browne ultimately takes a stand to the backwards police department and his wife's lover, a stand that he had always hoped someone might make in their small Tennessee town. And what happens? He is shot in the back and disembowled. The same police officer who partners with Browne's wife's lover is the crooked cop who beat a young 13-year-old boy (Kotto) many year ago. Kotto returns to town on the same train as Lee Majors and Barbara Hershey, and soon enough he has the crooked cop in his sights in an isolated hay field. But he cannot pull the trigger. It is a strong statement about the contrasting moralities of both races. Sterling Silliphant, one and the same from In the Heat of the Night, gives Kotto few lines of dialogue. The actor himself has a stoic and quiet anger that comes across from the opening scene, his own score of catchy R&B sounds his arrival in each scene. Ultimately Lee Majors failure to bring Browne's killers to justice forces Kotto to take action on his own, on behalf of the African-American community that will find no redemption in the law. Rather than shooting Browne's killer, the same officer who brutally beat him as a young boy, Kotto pushes him into the hay bailer and we watch his horrifiying death. Director William Wyler, "Funny Girl" and other mainstream films, presents perhaps the most graphic scene put in a film up to 1970.  

We leave The Liberation of L.B. Jones on a train. The same characters that arrived earlier in the week are on board again. We have two forms of justice. The quiet protest of Majors and Hershey to Cobb's active indifference to racial justice takes them away. The violent and vengeful response of Kotto brings him certain fugitive status.  Are they both right? Are they both wrong? 

The film itself was poorly reviewed and failed to make money. The KKK made anonymous complaints about the content. How do we know it was them? Ask the New York Times Review from 1970. African-Americans applauded the film's content. There are several clips on black film websites and reviews that praise the innovation and boldness of the picture. In the same sense, the review from the NY Times and TV Guide, as well as an article on William Wyler suggest that white audiences and critics were appauled by the film's blunt commentary. But more importantly, people were shocked that there was no white hero to tidy things up in the end. I very much look forward to comparing this to my other films. Until then...