Cast:
Savannah Churchill (Regina), Jimmy Wright (Dollar Bill), Billie Allen (Etta), William Greaves (Isaiah "Alabama" Lee), Emery Richardson (Roberts), Powell Lindsay (Bad Boy George), Louise Jackson (Mrs. Sands), and Charley Macrae (Mac) Written and Directed by Powell Lindsay.
Review:
Admittedly, the obscure stuff makes for a film for curious spotlighting. Souls of Sin is generally considered one of the last "race films" made. These were films made outside of the Hollywood system by African Americans that were targeted for black audiences. I shouldn't say that it is the outright last one with black audiences in mind, because Carib Gold (1956) came out years later with showings that were segregated. It is the discovery of old nitrate films in a warehouse located in Tyler, Texas that we have to thank for the fact that a number of black films exist at all, which is now referred to as the Tyler Black Film Collection in the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection at Southern Methodist University. Powell Lindsay may not have been a well noted name of film, but he was still a noted name in other fields worth mentioning. He was the cofounder of the Harlem Suitcase Theater (with Langston Hughes, who he once felt would come to be recognized as the black Mark Twain) and the Negro Playwrights Company. He directed outside of the system after this film, such as "This Is Our America", done for the Panorama of Progress at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. He did research analysis for the state's legislative service bureau while founding an association of research for history of black people within the state of Michigan. He died in 1987 at the age of 82 from a long bout of cancer. The film was produced by William D. Alexander, who had gone from producing press releases and newsreels about black soldiers and sailors during World War II to forming his own production company. This included musical shorts and a couple of features, such as The Fight Never Ends, which had Joe Louis play himself. He moved to London in 1950 and made documentaries involving de-colonialization that promoted new African states, such as Liberia. Souls of Sin was his penultimate feature as a producer, because he returned to produce The Klansman (1974). I should've expected a movie that lasts barely an hour to have songs, with this including three of them: "The Things You Do To Me" by Savannah Churchill and Henry Glover, along with "Disappointment Blues” and “Lonesome Blues” by William Greaves.
It's a shame that the movie isn't particularly that good, because it is at least a semi-curiosity given the time it was released. This was the year of Home of the Brave, Lost Boundaries, Pinky, and Intruder in the Dust, films that saw Hollywood try to make a movie with a focus on black characters that did not aim for the typical depiction of black people on screen (which is viewed in a variety of circles today as demeaning). Of course, Pinky and Lost Boundaries each had white actors in the lead roles of black people that could pass for white, so obviously the bar had to be set somewhere. It is basically a series of vignettes that results in only the mildest of interests, never really going far with any sort of story beyond static lines and a few songs. I can't recommend it, but it is at least a time vacuum with a curiosity factor that would make a strange double-header with Carib Gold for seeing a fading brand of aiming for a specific audience with specific tools (read: cheap budgets). Wright is known for both this and being involved in a small role within Orson Welles' 1936 production of "Voodoo Macbeth" and a small role in the 1980 "meta soap opera" Personal Problems. The role here is not much to really say favorably of, mostly because it isn't anything more than one-note lines about, uh, folks trying to make a living in a not-quite noir / drama. Billie Allen was noted for being one of the first black entertainers with a recurring role on network television along with appearing on TV commercials, and this was her film debut (she later became a director for the stage). Greaves had joined the Actors Studio in 1948 and had initially aspired to act before he moved to Canada in order to become a filmmaker. So yes, he gets to sing a bit here for a film that reminds one that there is more to films than being ahead of the camera. Honestly, the fact that the movie is mostly a happy one is the strange part, since it is a movie that doesn't really move particularly far in any direction, aside from a few diverting songs and a mildly entertaining climax. As a whole, this is a low-budget affair through and through that is a notch below stuff that Oscar Micheaux had done two decades prior, but it is a mild curiosity of seeing where films had to go when it came to the idea of aiming for black audiences beyond the small stuff and to see names get their chance in the spotlight.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
Speaking of which, next time: Intruder in the Dust.
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