The Czar of Black Hollywood

I've seen a bunch of Micheaux's films so I was excited about this. Micheax, the pioneer of black film making, gets short shrift in mainstream cinema. A failed homesteading enterprise led him to novelize his experience, paving the way for a career as a successful novelist which led him to filmmaking. It makes for a helluva tale but, as presented here, the drama leaks slowly out. You'd expect an hour-seven minute film to whiz by. That's not the case. Instead, it's PBS-light without the benefit of multiple voices personalizing the story. When a train is mentioned, you see a train on screen. When Chicago is mentioned, you see a picture of Chicago. The graphics turn it more into an audiobook than a film. The narration does a decent job but he's flat and emotionless.

That said, the effort to research and create a movie about Micheaux must be heartily applauded even if the result turns out a movie without any real drive.