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| Stuart Heisler: The Negro Soldier (US 1944). |
US 1944. Director: Stuart Heisler.
Scen.: Carlton Moss. F.: Allen Q. Thompson, Paul Vogel, Horace Woodard. M.: Jack Ogilvie. Scgf.: Haldane Douglas. Mus.: Howard Jackson, Albert Glasser, Paul Horgan, Meredith Willson, Earl Robinson, Dimitri Tiomkin.
Non-fiction with enactments of historical moments and animations by Walt Disney Studios.
Featuring: William Broadus (Jim), Clarence Brooks (Chaplain), Carleton Moss (il pastore), Bertha Wolford (signora Bronson), Norman Ford (Robert Bronson).
Prod.: Frank Capra per U.S. War Department. 35 mm. 43 min
IMDb soundtrack listing: "Hit the Leather" (Meredith Willson); "Arms For The Love Of America" (Irving Berlin), Piano Concerto In F Major (George Gershwin), "Onward Christian Soldiers" (Arthur Sullivan, arr. Dimitri Tiomkin), "Old Abe Lincoln Came Out of the Wilderness" (trad.), "I've Been Working on the Railroad" (trad.), "Over There" (1917, George M. Cohan), "Stars and Stripes Forever" (1897, John Philip Sousa), Symphony No.9 In D Minor, Op. 125, choral: Ode to Joy (1824, Ludwig van Beethoven), "You're in the Army Now" (1917, comp. Isham Taylor, lyr. Tell Taylor and Ole Olsen), "On, Brave Old Army Team!" (West Point fight song, comp. Philip Egner), "The U.S. Air Force (Wild Blue Yonder)" (1938, official song of the U.S. Air Force, comp. Robert Crawford), "The Army Goes Rolling Along" (official song of the U.S. Army, comp. Edmund L. Gruber, lyr. John Philip Sousa), "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (adapted from "God Save the Queen", lyr. Samuel Francis Smith).
AFI Catalog online sampling of the soundtrack: "Since Jesus Came into My Heart," "Our Boys Will Shine," "This Is the Army, Mr. Jones," "Yankee Doodle Girl," "Sleepy Lagoon" and "Holy, Holy."
AA additions:
– Theme tune (in the beginning and the finale): "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" (trad. spiritual of Black slaves of the early 19th century, copyrighted by Jay Roberts in 1865).
– "John Brown's Body" [the same melody as in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"] (music: trad. American folk song, 1856, lyr.: James E. Greenleaf, C. S. Hall, C. B. Marsh, and others, 1861)
– When W. C. Handy appears, we hear "St. Louis Blues" (W. C. Handy, 1914).
Unreleased in Finland.
Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020: Guns for Hire: Frank Tuttle vs. Stuart Heisler
Print from: National Archives at College Park – Special Media Archives Services Division (RDSM).
Introduce Ehsan Khoshbakht.
E-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra.
Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 30 Aug 2020.
Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "This film is considered a “watershed in the use of film to promote racial tolerance”, and Heisler had previously handled the subject with surprisingly fine results in his 1940 The Biscuit Eater. Hollywood showed little interest in the subject of race, apart from work by those communist writers such as Lester Cole (None Shall Escape) and John Howard Lawson (Sahara) who gave African Americans a voice as agents of democracy in the fight against fascism. However, The Negro Soldier was perhaps the only film in that vein written by an African American, Carlton Moss. Films about the black experience were either ‘churchy’ or ‘bluesy’ (a rare exception, King Vidor’s 1929 Hallelujah! was both). The Negro Soldier is churchy (even if it does include a fleeting shot of the father of the blues, W. C. Handy), adopting the form of a sermon, in which the history of African Americans’ involvement in the making of America is recounted to an entirely black audience. But when the familiar image of the church minister at the pulpit arrives, it delivers a twofold punch: it is Moss himself – and the book in his hands is Mein Kampf, from which he reads Hitler’s perspective on the black race. The church form finds new urgency, as the film’s writer merges roles with that of the minister. Heisler makes his point visually, to avoid preaching: at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the German and Japanese athletes fail and an African American wins; a black conductor leads a mixed orchestra through Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Combining footage from fiction films, recreations of real events and newsreels, Heisler and Moss’s take on racial tolerance was perhaps too much for the Army: they demanded that some scenes be cut, such as one in which a black officer commands the troops, and another in which a white nurse massages a black soldier. That didn’t stop African American soldiers and the black press from admiring the film as a step towards a dignified image of their people on screen." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)
AA: A milestone and model in portraying African Americans in the cinema, still dignified, dramatic and engrossing.
"E pluribus unum" ("One from Many"), the motto of the Great Seal of the United States is in this film no decoration. It is the substance of the account of the history of the African Americans since the Revolutionary War.
Directed by Captain Stuart Heisler under the supervision of Colonel Frank Capra, the movie offers a many-sided and constructive account of the African American experience. It keeps silent about many things. But it expresses those things powerfully via indirection.
When Carlton Moss preaches from the church pulpit and recites relevant pages from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, he is of course also indirectly referring to the White Supremacy gospel of the Ku Klux Klan. Fighting Hitler, we fight racism everywhere, the Hitler inside.
Visually, the movie is rich in montage sequences, and there is also epic footage from West Point and other military subjects. The animations are from the Walt Disney Studio. Also the score and the soundtrack grow into an inspiring time machine. There is a long soundtrack listing in the Internet Movie Database, and another, different list, appears in the AFI Catalog online. Both are incomplete, missing "St. Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy, the father of the blues, who appears in the live footage in person, but, mystifyingly, also such key songs as "John Brown's Body" / "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", and, most importantly, the film's theme tune, "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho".
We saw the unabridged original director's cut, and the white nurse is on display, but no massage of a Black patient takes place.
Inspired by the singing of one of his parishioners, an Army sergeant, a minister of a black church addresses his congregation about the role of black soldiers in contemporary America. To emphasize the importance of America's resistance to Nazism, the minister reads passages from Hitler's book Mein Kampf , in which Hitler decries progress for blacks and calls for the extermination of all who oppose him. Using the 1932 championship bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling as a metaphor for the conflict between the United States and Germany, the minister details the participation of blacks in various struggles throughout American history, including the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and World War I. Specific heroes of those wars--Peter Salem of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Wilson of the War of 1812 and Samuel Washington of World War I--are cited by the minister, as are various black military units, such as the 371st Infantry, which distinguished itself in combat during World War I. After mentioning many prominent blacks of the past and present, including Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, and citing the achievements of black academic institutions, such as Howard University and Tuskegee Institute, the minister recalls the 1936 Berlin Olympics in which black athletes such as Jesse Owens and Ben Johnson defeated their German opponents. As the minister reminds his congregation of the attack on Pearl Harbor and of German atrocities, a woman interrupts and starts to read from a letter written by her son Bob, a recently promoted army officer. In his letter, Bob describes his army training, from his induction to his intensive drilling and preparation for battle. The minister then describes the range of jobs for black men and women in the military, from fighter pilot, to quartermaster, to tank destroyer, to infantryman, to road builder, to anti-aircraft gunner. In a final prayer, the minister enjoins his congregation to participate in America's continuing fight for liberty and justice for all.
WIKIPEDIA
Summary
The Negro Soldier
The Negro Soldier opens in a large, neo-gothic style church. From the point of view of the congregation, we see a preacher giving a sermon referring to different men in the army. The camera pans to different members of the army seated in the audience as the preacher mentions each one. This preacher, played by Carlton Moss, then launches into a speech reflecting on the achievements of African Americans over the years. Famous boxers and track stars are mentioned as defeating Germany in matches such as the Berlin Olympic Games. The preacher mentions that the Nazi army is currently at war with the entire world, and just like “Joe Louis training for the fight of his life”, the real championship will be determining which way of life will survive World War II. Moss claims that the stakes in this war are the greatest that men have ever fought for. To further stress the importance of fighting against the Nazis, Moss begins to read from the “gospel according to Hitler”. At this time Moss quotes from Hitler's book Mein Kampf, "...it is a sin against all reason to train a born half-ape until one believes one has made a lawyer of him." This quote is used to plant anger and the desire to want to fight against Hitler and his army. The congregation looks surprised to realize what the Nazis really think about the African American race.
Moss then begins to recall all of the examples of African American heroism over the history of America. For example, Moss mentions Crispus Attucks being the first to die in the Boston Massacre. These scenes from different battles and different time periods over United States history are proof that America truly owes its national freedom to all of its peoples, including the African American population. Moss goes on to mention that a statue had been built in order to commemorate all colored soldiers with the engraving, “lasting record shall be made of their unselfish devotion to duty”. Unfortunately, Moss claims, the Nazis went on to destroy the monuments in France that were devoted to African American soldiers. Furthermore, in reference to America, Moss says “men of every faith, color, and town have helped to nourish it”. Moss keeps stressing the fact that African Americans played a crucial role in building the United States and making the country what it is today.
The film then shifts gears, as a woman from the congregation, a Mrs Bronson, stands up to talk about her son, who has recently joined the army. She reads a letter from him, where he tells how he has learned how to make a bed, played sports, met a girl at a dance, and trained on the battlefield. The film shows images of Mrs Bronson's son going through training and all of the different events that he writes about in his letter. The head officials in the army are shown telling all of the soldiers that there are now three times as many colored men in the army than there were previously. This section of the film stresses the notion that men of all colors and backgrounds have come together to fight on the battlefield for the common purpose of defeating the Nazis. All men, colored or white, know the meaning of their job and are determined to work together in order to fight against evil. The common man who has previously been known as a farmer, carpenter, tailor, or any other common folk job is now a part of the United States Army and ready to do his share in the fight. The Negro Soldier flashes different scenes of the brutal warfare taking place that need to be dealt with. The final scene of the movie shows the entire black congregation standing up and singing, as soldiers march towards the fight.
Influence
The Negro Soldier influenced later African American films and its viewers in different ways. The film played a considerable part in altering the types of roles that African Americans received in following films. For example, instead of showing blacks only as slaves or subservients, this film showed African Americans as lawyers, musicians, athletes, and other valued professions. In different movies during this time period, African Americans were often portrayed as humorous characters. However, after The Negro Soldier, African Americans played more respectable and prominent roles in films.
Furthermore, people came to realize how important and influential a tool films were for social change. Messages within films, if expressed the correct way, could influence audiences greatly. The message within The Negro Soldier solidified the notion and provided visual proof that racial equality was a justified concept and should be accepted. African Americans around the country were very pleased with this film.
Legacy
In December 2011, The Negro Soldier was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The Registry said the film "showcased the contributions of blacks to American society and their heroism in the nation’s wars, portraying them in a dignified, realistic, and far less stereotypical manner than they had been depicted in previous Hollywood films."
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