Body and Soul

I learned of Oscar Micheaux from Melvin Van Peebles's documentary "Classified X", about the history of cinema produced and directed by African-Americans. I recently saw Micheaux's "Veiled Aristocrats", and have now seen his "Body and Soul".

For the most part, it's a good movie, with Paul Robeson playing a con artist posing as a clergyman. However, there's one thing that's grating about it, and this might just be a 21st-century view of it: the dialogue on the intertitles. It sounds like stereotyped depictions of African-Americans. Maybe Micheaux was writing the actors' actual dialects, but to me it sounded like it came from a minstrel show. On that subject, after Willie Mays died recently, Keith Olbermann recalled a phone that he'd had with Mays, where Mays affected what sounded like a minstrel show voice (Olbermann didn't imitate it, noting that for a white person to do so would sound incredibly racist).

Anyway, it's an okay movie on its own, with fine performances all around. Just remember that the dialogue on the intertitles sounds cringey nowadays.