Within Our Gates

Primitively filmed, with a fractured and meandering plot. Micheaux gives little evidence here of having much directorial ability. It's hard to imagine anyone actually enjoying watching it.

Of historical and sociological interest as an early black-made film, but compares poorly to professional-quality films of that era from the US and elsewhere. Of some value because it presumably shows how educated blacks of that era looked at themselves.

I was deeply affected by parts of this story about the plight of negroes as told for negroes by negro director Oscar Micheaux. Ostensibly, it's about a woman who tries to help a poor southern school for negroes by getting financial help to supplement the meager amount the state provides, but it is laced with observations about racial prejudice. One bigoted southern woman living in the north is against the women's suffrage movement for fear that negro women will get the right to vote. And she expresses her negative sentiment about educating negroes: "Thinking will give them a headache." Micheaux gets more points across in the best part of the film, the flashback scene near the end prefaced with a title card "Sylvia's Story." We see how a negro preacher agrees with some condescending whites that the negroes should keep their place, but privately condemns himself for doing so, announcing that "negroes and whites are equal" to himself. We see how injustice reigns with a lynch mob and how the innocent, even an innocent bystander, can easily become victims of racial prejudice. The film is worth seeing for this sequence alone, providing images that caused me to lose some sleep. Micheaux also slips in comments about the negroes' accomplishments in the Spanish-American and Mexican wars and WWI, as if to bolster the low self-image of his negro viewers. The film may be primitive by some standards, but Oscar Micheaux tells a powerful story.

The film was intended for negro audiences, but because of some controversial parts (rape and lynching) many exhibitors refused to show it, so very few saw it when it was released. This being the earliest surviving film made by an African American, it was placed on the National Film Registry and lovingly restored from the only surviving copy in Spain (see the alternative version listing for details). The Library of Congress is to be commended for doing such a fine job.

Oscar Micheaux is one of my motion picture heroes.

With courage and determination, he set out to make movies for and about black people when it wasn't otherwise much done.

He was a pioneer in independent film-making, raising money in the most unusual places and unusual ways.

He deserves a lot of praise ... but, alas, his results were too often disappointing.

"Within Our Gates" has a lot of potential, but most of it is unmet.

The acting is pretty good, but the camera work and editing are lacking; and the script misses badly.

The story is a good one, and the school that is at the heart of a major subplot has a real-life counterpart: Professor Laurance Jones created a school for the black people of the piney woods near Jackson, Mississippi, in the very earliest years of the 20th century.

Professor Jones' story is incredibly inspiring and I urge everyone who cares about spirit and courage to take a look (http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/vol/21991.shtml is one source).

Micheaux and Jones have somewhat parallel lives, though Jones ultimately achieved recognition in his lifetime.

Micheaux should have, and I am grateful beyond words that at least his films are finally being seen by a wider audience.

They are flawed, yes, but they present two stories we all need to know about: The actual topic of the movie, and that of Micheaux himself.

The ending of this movie is, frankly, beyond my comprehension. It seems to come out of thin air, and I fear it must have been hastily tacked on in order to placate someone. Too bad, but still the movie is historically valuable.

This is added June 10, 2015: There is a print available at YouTube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1E0NrcnwAE

I haven't watched more than a few seconds, but so far it's a terrible print.

I disagree with the first comment. I did not find this movie silly at all. I believe it was up to par with any other silent movie of this same period, and the acting was not atrocious. I think it was a very provocative movie for its time and, whether it was purposefully or not, a great response to DW Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." That movie showed a mulatto man trying to force himself on a White woman, along with numerous other stereotypes of Black people in that movie. "Within Our Gates" showed the true side of what really happened, especially with the lynching, and the main character and her *real* father. I feel privileged to have seen a Black silent film, especially one of such high caliber.

The best word to describe this film is "amateurish". While it does have a central focus, the muddled, confused and confusing plot proceeds in fits and starts. Characters drop in and out of the narrative seemingly at random and sometimes change outlook right in the middle of a scene.

Worse still, the film has been edited with a proverbial meat-ax. Odd bits and pieces of irrelevant action are often spliced without rhyme or reason into the movie, further adding to the viewer's difficulties in following the plot.

Despite all obstacles, however, individual scenes do succeed. The lynch sequence exerts a terrible power because—whether by design or accident—it looks like an actual newsreel event.

Acting too is mighty variable. Evelyn Preer does good work as the unsettled heroine, Bernice Ladd makes a forceful bigot, and there are two outstanding actors among the ranks of obvious amateurs in the support cast: E.G. Tatum and the uncredited Old Ned.

Which brings me to the most amazing aspect of Micheaux' vision. "Within Our Gates" is a cry for justice, but no apologia. In fact it often seems to go out of its way to present a surprisingly warts and all take on African-Americans. The two men just mentioned, for instance, enact self-seeking traitors (and do so brilliantly). The little spiv, Jack Chenault, is a despicable criminal, and even the second female lead seems somewhat unsympathetic (especially in the film's original uncensored version which has unfortunately been lost).