Le dernier négrier

In 1860, a mutinous crew forces the captain of a former SLAVE SHIP to return to Africa for another highly profitable human cargo.

Sadly neglected, this is a film with some very good elements indeed. Stirring action, a little romance, a dose of humor and a social conscious are among its strengths. Although the opening shipyard scenes have a rather lean feel to their production values - with the sparse crowd of extras and the rear projection - once the plot moves to shipboard & Africa the film's quality kicks into high gear. The climax, with its gunplay & explosions, is especially exciting. The tying of the slaves to the anchor chain - a horrendous scene - anticipates AMISTAD by about 60 years.

The acting is quite good. Warner Baxter nicely underplays his role as the slaver captain who reforms upon marrying lovely Elizabeth Allan. Rumpled Wallace Beery as the First Mate & spunky Mickey Rooney as a disillusioned cabin boy are a great acting team and tremendous fun to watch. Beery was an actor who could steal a scene from anyone (except the late Marie Dressler), but he almost meets his match in Rooney. The Kid shows the vivacity & talent which would soon catapult him to Hollywood's top box office star.

Joseph Schildkraut scores in a flamboyant role as a foreign slave trader. Jane Darwell is funny in her few moments as Miss Allan's tough old mother. George Sanders plays a sophisticated mutineer & Edwin Maxwell is a nervous auctioneer. The massive Jane Jones is striking - literally - as a Virginia saloonkeeper who refuses to take nonsense from anyone.

In unbilled roles, movie mavens should recognize Lon Chaney, Jr. as a most unfortunate dock worker, and young Matthew `Stymie' Beard, of OUR GANG fame, as a boy on the wharf.

It is ironic, even with the film's sentiment for decent behavior towards Blacks, that 1930's Hollywood was still utterly racist and did not promote equal treatment for African-American performers (Asian actors fared little better). The Studios were still very segregated, Black & White stars rarely socialized on an equal footing, and racial stereotypes abounded in the movie plots. Only occasionally did Black performers' names appear in the credits and then usually at the bottom of the list. SLAVE SHIP preaches a good sermon, but the Hollywood congregation still needed to wake up & deal with its own intolerant behavior.

The 1930s was a terrible decade for black actors in films in many ways. Considering the popularity of the caricatures played by the likes of Steppin Fetchit and Willie Best, it would seem that most studios saw black people as slightly less than people. There were a few examples, such as Hattie McDaniel receiving an Oscar for her performance in "Gone With the Wind" (though she did play a slave) and this film, "Slave Ship". While I wouldn't exactly call this movie the best in portraying blacks as people...it was way ahead of most films of the day.

When the film begins, you see a heavy-handed scene where it's meant to illustrate that the ship in the picture is cursed. After the deaths of many of its crew due to illnesses and accidents, the ship is sold very cheaply. The new mission of this merchant ship is to illegally transport slaves to America--something banned both by the British and United Stares for most of the 19th century. Captain Lovett (Warner Baxter) and his crew are out to illegally transport more Africans to a life of slavery. The Captain seems to hate this life...but he does it and is responsible for much wickedness. As for his crew, his First Mate (Wallce Beery) seems to adore the life!

Following this trip, the Captain meets a decent lady and falls in love. He decides to give up the life and go straight--transporting normal commercial goods instead of slavery. However, after order his First Mate to fire the old crew and hire all new non-slavers, he is tricked...and soon after the ship with him and his bride leaves port, he finds he is no longer in charge of the ship and the Mate intends for them to return to Africa for more slaves! At the risk of his life and that of his bride, the Captain fights his men and tries to do the right thing. But it's just him and an inexperienced woman against an entire crew! What are their chances?

The acting is good and it's obvious Twentieth Century-Fox must have seen this as a premier project since it borrowed Beery and Mickey Rooney (two big stars at the time) from MGM to make this picture. The film doesn't go far enough by today's standards to preach against the evils of slavery but it is still quite compelling and worth your time. I particularly liked Beery in this one as he apparently was playing himself....and did it quite well.

My grandmother Gladys Lehman and her partner Sam Hellman were brought in to rework the script as WF was notoriously drunk and not getting it done- they finished their work and sent the script to Zanuck for final approval- the note they got back was " Can we make this movie without the Negroes?" DZ

Gladys Lehman was born on January 24, 1892 in Gates, Oregon, USA as Gladys Collins. She was a writer, known for Meet Joe Black (1998), Death Takes a Holiday (1934) and Mexicali Rose (1929). She was married to Benjamin H. Lehman Jr. She died on April 7, 1993 in Newport Beach, California, USA.

SLAVE SHIP

Aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Sound format: Mono

(Black and white)

Any film which opens with an unbilled Lon Chaney Jr. being crushed to death during the launching of a ship can't be all bad! And, indeed, Tay Garnett's SLAVE SHIP gets off to a cracking start with a hellish vision of the slave trade along the West African coast in 1860. Sadly, the long middle section is bogged down by muted dramatics and a number of soggy romantic interludes (Warner Baxter and Elizabeth Allan provide the offending drippery), but the rousing climax makes up for some of the longueurs. George Sanders turns up, horribly miscast, in one of his pre-stardom roles as a villainous sea-dog.

William Faulkner must have envisioned "Slave Ship" as a dark commentary on the curse of slavery(the "cursed ship" element is abandoned early on) and the studio tried to turn it into a typical adventure yarn. The results are strangely tasteless, unsettling, and facinating.

This is a bad movie, but one I highly recommend. The movie seems to be saying "these people veiwed things in a different way, but the best of them rose above slavery." We feel almost as much distance to movie makers, as Wallace Berry is mostly viewed as a roughish but likeable scoundrel; though we learn early on he is a genocidal mass murderer.

Though only seen in short glimpses, the inhumanity of slavery is fairly well expressed. It's the fairly casual context of subject that is allmost chilling. But see it for yourself and decide.