 |
| Director Philip Leacock |
TAKE A GIANT STEP B+ USA (100 mi) 1959 d: Philip Leacock
While this song wasn’t written yet when the film was made, it is nonetheless very à propos. —Take a Giant Step Outside Your Mind, Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal - Take a Giant Step (1969 Version) YouTube (4:16)
An often forgotten film in the annals of American cinema, which is unfortunate, as it was one of the few Hollywood films to address systemic racism head on, written off at the time, having so much trouble getting distributed in the United States due to its racial subject matter, yet it follows in the footsteps of Martin Ritt’s Edge of the City (1957), even borrowing some of the same cast, or before that Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out (1950) and Richard Brooks’ Blackboard Jungle (1955), all starring Sidney Poitier. This one does not, choosing instead American singer and songwriter Johnny Nash, who made just three films, whose claim to fame is the hit song I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash | The Midnight Special YouTube (3:02), yet he is the star of this family melodrama about a black teenager’s struggle with racism while living in an all-white middle class neighborhood in the 1950’s. A predecessor to Canadian film director Daniel Petrie’s highly influential A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961), which was based on Lorraine Hansberry’s critically acclaimed 1959 play, which was enormously successful, running for 19 months, introducing details of black life to the overwhelmingly white Broadway audiences, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, the youngest and first black to do so. As the only black plays to make it to Broadway during this period, this is a screen version of Louis S. Peterson’s semiautobiographical play by the same name, the first black playwright to have a dramatic play produced on Broadway in 1953 (Hansberry was the first black woman), featuring many of the original cast members (Estelle Hemsley, Frederick O’Neal and Pauline Meyers reprised their roles for the film), which not only explores the racial divide, but also the generational gap, pitting the old ways against the new, where outside of Elia Kazan’s PINKY (1949), this may be the first coming-of-age American film that explores black family dynamics, but it also shows just how out-of-touch the parents are when they ignore their child’s pleas for help with the real-life situations he’s facing. Revived off-Broadway in 1956 where it received critical acclaim, both plays dramatized the growing black consciousness among the younger generation of educated, northern-born, black teenagers, with Peterson, in collaboration with screenwriter Julius J. Epstein, helping to adapt his own play for the screen at a time when black screenwriters were a rarity in Hollywood. Released the same year as Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), which deals with similar themes, but more from an adult perspective, the film is directed by British director Philip Leacock, who learned filmmaking while serving in the British Army during World War II, spending most of his career working in television, but this received two Golden Globe nominations, despite its failure at the box office.
Like A RAISIN IN THE SUN, this has a stagy, theatrical quality to it, where dialogue drives the picture, and while it’s thoughtfully provocative, dancing around real-life issues, this is surprisingly mainstream, where it’s hard to believe people actually took offense to the film’s content, but it does feature a nearly all-black cast, with a few whites sprinkled in for good measure. According to an interview with the director (Philip Leacock), they had a hard time finding a Hollywood hotel at the time that would accept the young black actor, so he found himself staying in some tawdry hotel. Nash plays Spence, a 17-year old high school student who has lived his entire life in the comforts of a middle class home, taught self-respect by his mother (Beah Richards) and strict father (Frederick O’Neal), while also afforded the services of a housekeeper Christine (Ruby Dee) to look after an ailing grandmother (Estelle Hemsley), but he has only just started to realize some of the hazards that come with being black. In the opening scene, there is an inference of trouble brewing, as Spence storms out of a classroom and is caught afterwards smoking in the bathroom, which causes him to be expelled from school. We only hear what caused the commotion afterwards when he confides to his grandmother, who understands him better than his parents, learning that he rejected his white teacher's depiction of American slaves as “too lazy” to fight for their emancipation during the Civil War, referring to them as “backwards,” and lacking intellect, that without the assistance of Northern whites they would never have gained their freedom. Barging out of the classroom, he felt, was the right thing to do, fuming that his white teacher intentionally dehumanized blacks, ignoring their long history of self-rule in Africa, but his grandmother disagrees with his inappropriate behavior that instead shines the light on him. Making matters worse, when a group of white friends drop by his home afterwards, he chides them for not sticking up for him, only to learn that he’s also being excluded from social events, as his friends want to start dating girls, but none of their parents want their daughters socializing with a black kid. Feeling ostracized, he angrily kicks them out, impulsively claiming he never wants to see them again. Afraid of having to explain any of this to his parents, who are likely to berate him, feeling the mixed-up confusion of being a teenager, finding adult values bewildering to comprehend, so he decides to run away, taking a bus to the black part of town looking for solace and comfort, where he lingers for a while, not really knowing what to expect, before wandering into a bar, where he’s lured into a world he’s never been exposed to. By learning how to deal with whiteness, he discovers that he somehow short-changed his own blackness. In his search for identity and meaning, his innocence and obvious naïveté make him appear foolish, where he’s clearly frustrated and disillusioned by things he doesn’t understand, yet his earnestness is one of the best kept secrets of the picture.
This fits into a format of 50’s conformity in the American suburbs, prior to any social justice or civil rights movements, where just speaking up on issues often makes you a target, as no one questioned authority in those days. Accordingly, this is a much safer and more conventional film than the more angrily authentic and undeniably unsentimental depiction of black life in A RAISIN IN THE SUN, yet this also means fewer have actually seen or even heard of it. In 1961 UCLA ran a successful film series program entitled The Undiscovered Film, selecting rare films by Franco Rossi, Juan Bardem, Luis Buñuel, Yasujirō Ozu, and this film, the only one with a prior screening in Los Angeles at the time, where the interest may have reflected the increasing popularity and mainstream critical acceptance of black literary works. The film was produced by Burt Lancaster through his Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production company, made for roughly $300,000 dollars. While Spence hears about it from his parents when he finally ambles back home, he gets a taste of how adults have had to sidestep these issues for generations, always having to “stay in your place,” which he finds infuriating, yet there’s simply a different standard for blacks and whites, as blacks are routinely stigmatized as threats to society, often sensationalizing those claims for public consumption, while white threats typically fly under the radar. While his acid-tongued grandmother, who freely speaks her mind, adds her two cents, “The truth is the truth and should be spoken at all times,” the real surprise here is the scintillating performance of Ruby Dee, who makes the most out of a small role, offering personality and guile, along with sage advice. Because of her close working relationship with Spence, he freely opens up and confesses his feelings to her, trusting her as part of the family, yet she very prominently humanizes the film, providing a flood of traumatic memories about growing up in the South, helping to console the young man when he feels down and out. His sense of loneliness and social isolation leaves him nowhere else to turn, so he turns to her, with the film exploring his awakening sexual desires, even thinking they might get intimate. As hard as that is to fathom, she takes it to heart, realizing how much it means to him, offering warmth and compassion instead of an instant rejection, helping expose him to a more adult viewpoint, but any hint of black sexuality, particularly coming from a man, was considered taboo in the Hollywood film industry, so sexual overtones that were inherent in the play are toned down considerably. Ruby Dee is an iconic actress and tireless advocate for social justice, appearing in both film versions of these essential black plays, and they wouldn’t be the same without her, as she helps elevate and actually transcend the material. But tragedy strikes at the most inopportune time, leaving Spence aghast and in complete despair, but it makes him intensely aware that there are greater problems than his own, showing magnanimous poise under the circumstances, offering the finale a tender grace note of hope going forward.
"TAKE A GIANT STEP" Johnny Nash, Ellen Holly, Ruby Dee ... entire film on YouTube (1:40:11)
