Murder in Harlem

Okay, in spite of what some of the other reviews may tell you, this is basically a really bad movie. But it is blessed with some features that make it sporadically fascinating in spite of its frequent bouts of ineptitude. First of all, the cast is not good. Some of the acting is painfully wooden, particularly from the leading lady. To give them their due, they've been handed some very stiff and unnatural dialogue. The best members of the cast clearly did some ad-libbing rather than stick to the clunky text.

It's also poorly directed and edited. This has nothing to do with the fact that it needs some significant restoration. It's also obvious that it was done on a shoestring budget, but that can't excuse all of its technical and artistic flaws. There is one scene where the camera attempts a simple maneuver, but then chops off the tops of the actors' heads and then jerkily and belatedly returns to a more workable composition. The script is an interesting mess -- very slow and dull in spots, but then weirdly non-linear and unpredictable in others. I couldn't tell if it was an early attempt at a Rashomon or Pulp Fiction- like experiment, or if it was merely disjointed and awkward. Perhaps a little of both.

But it's interesting for a few other reasons, one of which is the excellent musical interlude around the midpoint, when the leading lady visits a speakeasy. Willie "The Lion" Smith is among the performers, and the music is terrific. Surprisingly, the technical quality of the soundtrack is not bad.

I also liked it for some of its fairly raw explanation of the race relations of the era. It's quite up front about the fact that blacks are second-class citizens, and everyone agrees that a black man who turns to the police for any sort of help is basically a chump. None of the many slicker and better movies of the era would have been so blunt about these sorts of things.

Anyway, it's good weird fun to watch, if you can get past the dullest scenes (the endless sequence between the boss at the chemical plant and the watchman he bribes comes to mind). Some of the bad acting is hilarious enough to be worth the effort.

It's film noir from an early African American movie producer. It's set in 1932 and 1935 in Harlem, New York. It tells the story of the murder of a white woman initially blamed on an African American watchman at the factory.

In 1935 Arthur Vance (Lorenzo McClane) was one of two African American watchmen at a chemical company in Harlem. The company's director, Anthony Brisbane (Andrew S. Bishop), asks him to come to the office briefly in the afternoon but then sends him home and tells him to return at 6:00 pm. Later on his shift, Vance discovers the body of a young white woman. The police and several notes at the scene point the finger at him.

The film then flashes back to 1932, where we meet African American Henry Glory (Clarence Brooks) selling a novel he authored door-to-door. Misunderstanding the directions of a buyer who recommends a potential purchaser across the street, Henry arrives at a different door and meets and is attracted to Claudia Vance (Dorothy Van Engle), a good-looking young woman who also buys a book. Unfortunately, next door to Claudia's apartment is a place run by the Catbird (Bee Freeman), a shady operation. On a later visit, Henry is robbed and thinks Claudia has set him up.

Back in 1935, we learn that Claudia is Arthur Vance's brother. Henry Glory is now an attorney, and Claudia asks him to represent Arthur. Together, they try to solve the mystery. We meet the other watchman, Lem (Alec Lovejoy), the white woman who was murdered, and her volatile boyfriend.

"Murder in Harlem" is valuable from a history-of-film perspective. The acting is clunky, and the surviving film has a few gaps that make some scenes choppy. But the movie includes some awesome African American music of the era. Oscar Micheaux is the earliest essential African American movie producer, beginning in the silent film era.

Just watched this Oscar Micheaux-directed movie on YouTube. Based on the Mary Phagan murder case of which a Leo Frank was the accused one, a black night watchman sees a dead white woman on his rounds, and first tries to call his boss. Somehow the police find out and this particular watchman gets arrested even though he says he didn't do it. I'll stop there and just say the story goes back to before the beginning quite a few times which may get you confused as the narrative goes on if you're not paying enough attention. Some of the performances seem stiff but Alec Lovejoy, playing Lem Hawkins, seems somewhat of a comic relief when he does some of his kowtowing to his white boss or does a good acting turn expressing concern about what his possible fate might be if he doesn't follow orders. There's also some good musical numbers whenever there's a restaurant scene. The print I saw on YouTube skipped some frames but for the most part, I understood what was going on. In summary, Murder in Harlem was an okay murder mystery drama.

The script is not tight, as there are unnecessary long parts and it is sometimes confusing. However, the general crime story is amusing and quite important, as it addresses serious issues together the parallel (and underdevelopped) love story: structural racism that make the black and the poor as being seen as suspucious and not owners of civil rights. Oscar Micheaux was a black pioneer in cinema in the United States, and his cinegraphy does matter. I may add that this particular film by him is much more interesting than most of the early mainstream white-made flicks produced in Hollywood under authoritarian Hays Code then and through subsequent years. The casting (mostly but not entirely black, what was interesting and unusual those years) has an acceptable, but not very skilled, performance. Sometimes, they seemed artificial and mechanic while saying their lines, and that includes the actors and actress in the leading roles: Clarence Brooks, Dorothy Van Engle and Andrew Bishop. There is, however, a great exception: Alec Lovejoy did a great job, with a very expressive and convincing performance, mostly as a comic relief but als with drama moments.

This film was the inspiration for Micheaux to write 'The Story of Dorothy Stanfield' eleven years later. The story is actually about her husband, Nathan Stanfield, who is living in hard times as a black medical doctor. It touches some very sensitive issues.