Within Our Gates (1920)
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Within Our Gates Movie Review
Within Our Gates is a 1920 silent drama film directed by Oscar Micheaux and starring Evelyn Preer. It’s more important than truly great, but it still remains a fascinating picture.
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“It is my duty and the duty of each member of our race
to help destroy ignorance and superstition“
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It portrays the contemporary racial situation in the United States during the early twentieth century, the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest etc. It is basically the oldest surviving and thus the first black movie and so of course it deserves respect for being so groundbreaking. It is a revolutionary movie that is not only positive toward the black community, but also directed by a black person himself which gives the movie much needed authenticity.
Oscar Micheaux is an interesting director whose style of filmmaking did not suit my sensibilities particularly if I am to be frank, but I still respected it. I am of course talking about the movie’s structure which is rather haphazard and very choppy. The movie basically jumps from one scene to another leading to many rushed moments and somewhat frenetic pacing. Maybe the runtime should have been longer as well.
But even though I found that structure problematic to say the least, it still led to one very positive thing and that is its feel which is very urgent and immediate. It had the power to change things which debatably it did not do unfortunately, but the filmmaking itself here held that power for sure.
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As for the plot points, I found the middle act lacking, but I really liked the first act and especially the third one which features one very interesting twist. Yes, they managed to include mixed-race ancestry in a 1920 movie and that surely a very brave, intriguing and impressive feat. The movie is thematically rich as it deals with the education and empowerment of black people as well as the involvement of white people in the cause, both negative and positive.
Evelyn Preer is a memorable presence, though not a great actress by any means. But Sylvia is such an interesting, different character for a silent movie that I still ended up really liking her. The movie got a lot of mileage for basically portraying an all-black cast as that was incredibly rare during the silent movie age, but the actors themselves aren’t all that great which is to be expected from this time period as they did not get enough opportunities. The characterization also could have been better as the movie has too many characters for too long of a running time so most were left underdeveloped.
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Within Our Gates is interestingly edited as I said above for better and for worse, the cinematography is also very strong and some shots are quite inspired. The direction is impressively modern, though obviously problematic, but still admirable for its time. The dialogue is great and although the movie has too many intertitles, they were still very character-revealing and crucial for the plot.
Within Our Gates is interestingly directed by Oscar Micheaux due to quick editing, the use of a lot of intertitles and a very urgent tone to it. The film is flawed owing to weaker acting and too many characters, but it’s still very well plotted with a particularly interesting twist ending and of course it’s a very important movie for being the oldest surviving film about black people and directed by a black director.
