Under the name of “American Trilogy”, three films from the short but powerful filmography of this little-known American director, are to be discovered in theaters from Wednesday in a restored version.
Resolutely independent filmmaker, film teacher at Yale for more than four decades, Michael Roemer, 95, is one of those discreet and unjustly misunderstood masters of American cinema, including across the Atlantic, whose finally restored works urgently need to be rediscovered. . Three feature films by this humanist director are released or released in theaters in France thanks to Films du Camélia, Wednesday March 15, 2023.
It is nothing but a man (A man like so many others1h30, 1964), The Plot Against Harry (Harry Plotnick alone against all1h21, 1970) and revenge is mine (Revenge is mine1:58, 1984).
On the surface, these three films have little in common. The first deals with the difficulties of a young African-American couple in the racist and segregationist south of the United States in the early 1960s, in the midst of a fight for civil rights. The second is a wacky, somewhat disjointed comedy about a little redeeming crook in the Jewish community of Bronx, New York. As for the third, the only one in colour, it is a bewitching psychological film in which a series of dramas, family and personal, collide in the life of a woman, played by the luminous Brooke Adams (seen in The Harvests of Heaven by Terrence Malick), which will become attached to a little girl crushed by a mentally disturbed mother.
A red thread unites these three films, however, and first of all the humanism that emerges from them. Michael Roemer has a subtle approach to his characters, he shares their dramas with us as if in immersion, always filming as close as possible to faces and expressions. Above all, the director does not judge his characters; he is content to show them to us in their simplest truth, without frills, but taking the time, in the fairest way possible.
“Nothing but a man”, a film of few words that says a lot
Of the three movies, nothing but a man is the most powerful. Given as “Malcolm X’s favorite movie”, it’s a feature film of few words that says a lot about the condition of African-Americans at that time. Rewarded at the Venice Film Festival when it was released in 1964 with the San Giorgio Prize, awarded to important works for the progress of civilization, this film was without equal at that time.
Michael Roemer who, in a quasi-documentary approach, spent time with African-American families in the South with his co-screenwriter Robert M. Young before writing the screenplay, tells a drama that resonates with his. Born in Berlin in 1928, Michael Roemer escaped the Nazi regime at the age of eleven thanks to Operation Kindertransports, which sent him to England with thousands of other Jewish children. He then joined the United States after the Second World War.
nothing but a man tells the story of Duff (Ivan Dixon). A worker on the construction of the railroads, he is well paid and leads an itinerant and unattached life in the company of his colleagues, black like him. One day, in Alabama, Duff goes for a walk alone in the nearest town and, although he is not very religious, ends up in the local black church from which escapes gospel songs. There he meets the lovely Josie, a teacher, who is also the priest’s daughter. Against his advice, they start dating. But Duff quickly feels the impasse is dawning: “Either we go to the stake or we get married. But you don’t want to sleep and I don’t want to get married“, he summarizes after a few chaste appointments.
The problem, however, is quite different. If Duff pleases Josie so much it is because he is different from the other blacks in the community, and in particular from his reverend father who accepted all the compromises with the whites so that the status quo would continue. However, bowing, very little for Duff. He does not particularly seek to fight it out, but he aspires to remain dignified and does not resign himself to intimidation, any more than he tolerates the condescension and scathing paternalism of whites who constantly nag blacks to ensure let them stay where they are.
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Muted violence on a Motown soundtrack
As he finally proposes to Josie and leaves his well-paid job for a job at the local sawmill, his refusal to compromise and submit, even as a worker, will quickly earn him a troublemaker image. and deprive him of work throughout the county. At the same time, Duff finds his father, an old, failing alcoholic who has abandoned him, and goes to visit his illegitimate 4-year-old boy who lives without love with a surrogate mother.
Without ever doing too much or showing too much (the incidents remain measured, the brutality is most often verbal), Michael Roemer manages to establish, under an apparent calm, a climate of threat, muted violence, and remarkable psychological tension. The film, in gorgeous black and white, is slow and stripped down but perfectly constructed. The vice of white domination gradually closes on the character of Duff who, struggling, will turn his anger against what he cherishes the most. Will he manage to swallow his rage and build a harmonious home?
On a Motown soundtrack, this film with strong political resonance, which manages to make the viewer feel the torments experienced by its characters, is carried by two actors who are not only excellent but very involved: Ivan Dixon, who plays Duff, and singer and actress Abbey Lincoln, who plays Josie, were at that time active activists in the civil rights movement in the United States.
Retrospective “American Trilogy” by Michael Roemer, in theaters Wednesday, March 15, 2023