“Nothing But a Man” is one of the two best movies ever made about black life in America. The other is Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep,” from 1977, an oblique, black-and-white daydream of life in South Los Angeles. “Nothing But a Man” was directed and co-written by Michael Roemer and released in 1964 and also filmed in black and white. But it unfolds with a clear-eyed realism that can’t afford the luxury of Burnett’s disorienting magic.
Delicately but not unsparingly, Roemer’s movie, which screens at the Harvard Film Archive through Jan. 20, tells the story of a handsome railroad worker named Duff (Ivan Dixon), who meets a schoolteacher named Josie (Abbey Lincoln) and leaves his itinerant section crew to settle down with her in a modest country shack. But romance is elusive and headaches steady. Duff takes a labor job and isn’t amused by the pointed joshing of a lone white co-worker. The other men tolerate it because it is, they feel, their lot in life: turning the other cheek.
Comments
Very nicely done. It reminds me a bit of a piece that Sebastian Smee did on Lucian Freud a couple of years ago in the Globe. Maybe it is time for you to take a drive (or a train) to New Haven and have a talk with Roemer. I would love to see a filmmaker of Roemer's stature do something based on the work of Harry Crews. I read "A Childhood; the Biography of a Place" years ago and it has always stayed with me. Now there's a life that would draw interesting connections among so many things not ordinarily written about or filmed. There are lots of lots in life. If you have five minutes, you might take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTlCywIuoE&feature=player_embedded