B. P. Rinehart's Reviews > The Devil Finds Work

" I found a leak in my building, and:
my soul has got to move.
I say:
my soul has got to move,
my soul has got to move. " - Epigraph for chapter three.


Being a black cinephile, I am always interested in reading other black cinephiles. James Baldwin just happens to be one such man. He has included some film criticism in all of his books of essays. This book is different because it is primarily about films that he has seen over his lifetime. If you have watched the excellent documentary (and the go-to introduction to Baldwin) I Am Not Your Negro, then you have already listened to at least 40% of the book--with the film scenes to go with the words! It is still Baldwin interrogating the true nature of the American republic, but with movies as the case study. Baldwin is snarkish, direct and poetic to great effect in this book. He does cover some already tread-on territory of his own life, but the main focus is what these movies say about the societies they are depicting in regards to race and sexuality. Since Baldwin reviews the movies methodically I will try to give summaries of some of the movies covered in the book.

It is no surprise that he reviews The Birth of A Nation based on the book The Clansman. While this was going to be an obvious critique, he focuses on the movie's crazed obsession with the idea that black people (or more specifically mulattoes) are happy and loyal in their place as long as they are not focused on self-respect, power or white women. Its influence is in the foolish arch-types it set for American films depicting black people and "race relations" ever since.

In The Heat of The Night: Baldwin takes the film to task for thinking that any black man would make any of the decisions that Virgil Tibbs (played by Sidney Poitier--his films take a beating in this book) makes in the movie at that point in time (or now).

Going with the above: The Defiant Ones is an incredible (willful) misunderstanding of the difference between black rage and white rage. One is born in the reality of one's history and treatment, while the other is from the irrational fear in one's head of "blackness." The infamous, preposterous ending of the film is a lesson in Hollywood fantasy as no black person in that position would do that, so that, "The white boy has given up his woman. The black boy has given up his hope of freedom..." He says that this action at the end is possible from a homosexual context, but that the American mind does not have the emotional maturity to consider such a thing, despite it being a valid reason.

His dissecting of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner is the comedic highlight of the book. There is much to criticize about the film (and the 2005 remake), but one cannot do it as well as James Baldwin. He manages to show some very eerie similarities between 'Guess' and TBOAN, most notably the black maid/mammy character in both films. This section was worth reading the whole book. One can tell he had fun with this part.

He uses the subject of Lawrence of Arabia to critique the movie and the book it was based on. He sees T.E. Lawrence to be a perfect example of the sort of warped mind that imperialism/colonialism produces. He does not pity Lawrence as much as the movie does ( which he considers an updated version of Gunga Din). He notes that even the over-bearing score is used to remind us of the British Empire. "It would appear that this island people need endless corroboration of their worth: and the tragedy of their history has been their compulsion to make the world their mirror..." Baldwin's argument is that the movie is about the mortification of an English schoolboy. He suggests a sequel could be made using the life of Neville Chamberlain.

He next does a very in-depth (about 4 pages) discourse on his impression of the McCarthy-era. I'll quote a section: "If I had ever really been able to hate white people, the era of that dimwitted, good-natured, flamboyant representative of the American people would have been pure heaven: for, not even the most vindictive hatred could have imagined the slimy depths to which the bulk of white Americans allowed themselves to sink: noisily, gracelessly, flatulent and foul with patriotism." He describes it as cowardly, infantile panic.

Baldwin begins chapter 3 with the story of his time in Hollywood writing the screenplay for a failed attempt to adapt The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Long story short: Fox studios tried to make a hokey "Hollywood" re-write of Baldwin's script and he bailed-out. He also saw the 1969 movie about Che Guevara which was just a thinly-veiled anti-communist (and anti-Hispanic) propaganda.

The longest review may be of the loose movie adaptation of Lady Sings the Blues. Billie Holiday had already stretched the truth some in the book (when you lived a life as brutal and hellish as hers, you would be tempted to change some facts to make thing feel slightly more reasonable--to have some agency in events), but Hollywood went further than anything Holiday would have done making the story barely based on anything in the book (this is very true). Baldwin also laments generally the way in which black artists are ignored by Hollywood, specifically naming Ethel Waters & Paul Robeson (who would die in obscurity a year after this book was published).

JB is not a fan of Blaxploitation movies, considering them to be industry gimmicks, that profit the system more than black filmmakers or actors. While I disagree with his applying this to all fims of that genre, certainly some were. He then goes on, interestingly enough, to name books that should be adapted to movies: Up from Slavery, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Invisible Man, Black Boy, The Bluest Eye to Soledad Brother. I wonder how he would feel knowing that his own novel If Beale Street Could Talk is getting a Hollywood adaptation.

He then suddenly goes in on a lengthy explanation of Pentecostal church-ritual, his ever distrust of white Christianity and the way his Pentecostal church contemplated the nature of sin and the Devil. This seems random, but in-fact it is the lead-up to the last film being discussed in the book and part of the reason for the title.
Baldwin saw The Exorcist twice, once with his brother and friends and another time by himself. Baldwin was told during the movie, "'So, we must be careful,' David said to me, 'lest we lose our faith--and become possessed.' He was no longer speaking of the film, nor was he speaking of the church.'" Baldwin says he would not criticize the supernatural elements of the film, because he was mindful of his own Pentecostal past. I'll turn the rest of the review over to James Baldwin:

"To encounter oneself is to encounter the other: and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and if I can respect this, both of us can live. Neither of us, truly, can live without the other: a statement which would not sound so banal if one were not so endlessly compelled to repeat it, and act on that belief.

"For, I have seen the devil, by day and by night, and have seen him in you and in me: in the eyes of the cop and the sheriff and the deputy, the landlord, the housewife, the football player: in the eyes of some governors, presidents, wardens, in the eyes of some orphans, and in the eyes of my father, and in my mirror. It is that moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself. The devil has no need of any dogma—though he can use them all—nor does he need any historical justification, history being so largely his invention. He does not levitate beds, or fool around with little girls: we do.

The mindless and hysterical banality of evil presented in The Exorcist is the most terrifying thing about the film. The Americans should certainly know more about evil than that; if they pretend otherwise, they are lying, and any black man, and not only blacks—many, many others, including white children— can call them on this lie, he who has been treated as the devil recognizes the devil when they meet.

"The grapes of wrath are stored in the cotton fields and migrant shacks and ghettoes of this nation, and in the schools and prisons, and in the eyes and hearts and perceptions of the wretched everywhere, and in the ruined earth of Vietnam, and in the orphans and widows, and in the old men, seeing visions, and in the young men, dreaming dreams: these have already kissed the bloody cross and will not bow down before it again: and have forgotten nothing."