Point noir

I was very impressed by this film and am glad it was finally released on DVD. It is still relevant in 2021 and has even deeper meaning given how little has changed since 1968. It would make a great double bill with the recent film Judas and the Black Messiah. Similar themes but with significant differences.

I hope this film becomes more well-known. It truly deserves attention by everyone interested in civil rights and the political conflict between people who want to be non-violent and the people who are willing to use weapons. In the middle are people who just need some money to live day to day and get basic needs met.

Isn't it so telling how the liberal filmmakers who were blacklisted generally re-emerged with their most groundbreakingly progressive works, or at least their edgiest? After Trumbo was reinstated into the Writers' Guild, he made Johnny Got His Gun, completely turning the conventional sensibilities of his own Guy Named Joe on its head. Dmytryk began working with the socially impactful liberal filmmaker Stanley Kramer. It was after Kazan testified that he made the revolutionary On the Waterfront and the prophetic A Face in the Crowd. One could say that American B director Jules Dassin was transformed as a filmmaker by his time in Europe, having made his masterpiece Rififi in France, but Up Tight! could've only been made by an American, with his finger truly on the pulse of the American state of affairs, which is to say very few Americans could've made this film.

Repressive, fascistic conservative policies and propaganda are constantly suppressing freethinking and truth, but they only make it rebound more outspoken and with more passion than ever before. Up Tight! is a quintessential case in point. It's a candid handling of black militancy. A little to my amazement, it doesn't cop out. There's no regressing toward an appeasing moderate end. The zeal and attitude of black revolutionaries are seen face to face with us, with little in the way of consolation for white liberals maybe even including myself.

Black communities celebrated this complete surprise discovery on my part as a film that said something for them. It had audacity enough to represent the rage of the ghetto. And its characters behave and think like it. It's outstanding that a major studio like Paramount backed and distributed this film. Whenever Hollywood itself has gotten involved in the envelope-pushing independent filmmaking sensibilities, it has made it viable for other movies to reflect on the American reality.

Julian Mayfield is sturdy as granite in his depiction of Tank, the informant. It's a thorny role since Tank is by and large garbled and unversed in his own intentions. But Mayfield moves with conviction. When Tank pays a visit to a wake, his bewilderment and anguish are so poignant. Raymond St. Jacques, as a centrist turned radical, is commanding and somewhat startling. He has awesome screen presence. Ruby Dee is affecting, moving and absolutely beautiful as Laurie, Tank's girlfriend.

Up Tight! is a high-quality and attention-grabbing film mainly owing to separate elements. It has no-nonsense and plain-spoken dialogue. It has more than a few commanding performances. It has moments of truth, as when the cops mow down a radical leader, while residents of a projects bucket down tin cans and abuse. These moments have their own life and continuation. To see them on the screen is sufficient.

Dassin returned to the U.S. after a long and transformative absence to deal with a precise time and setting, and he has a great deal he wants to show us about it. This triggers challenging changes in the movie's pitch as he moves between his underdog protagonist, a heartfelt, half-wit alcoholic informer, and the rebellious leaders, straightforward, skillful, fanatical, vicious. Our feelings become mixed. This is good! When whites saw Up Tight! in 1968, many alleged to have been troubled by the audience reaction: There was a shout of approval each time a white guy got hit. Huh. Well, this should've been an enlightening experience, affording us whites with a fraction of the same kind of gut reaction that blacks had for a seeming eternity when a black guy got hit. Or had to scuff their feet. Or had to squeeze inside the Mantan Moreland and Sleep 'n' Eat stereotypes. Up Tight! brought those days to an end, that is before black filmmakers began pigeonholing themselves.

Set in Cleveland in the days after Martin Luther King's funeral, this gorgeous film interweaves several stories about what seems like typical Black urban America. There are people struggling to survive, there are revolutionaries (this is 1968), and there is the leading man, Tank, who is troubled by failure and drink, and by King's death. So crime in the name of racial justice collides with ordinary people who have their own kind of individual justice, or just decency, but strained and compromised. In a way, this is about life, ordinary life, except the times are not ordinary at all, and the drama of having a social cause elevates and distorts ordinary things. The director, Jules Dassin, is known for a couple or three great noirs, and maybe that suits the mood here, twenty years later. But the big credit is just him taking on a movie with this kind of topical meaning, and with sincerity. The political meeting in the center of movie is a bit clichéd no doubt, but it feels close enough to get the point across. The story has classic roots, in a weird way-it's based on a 1925 book, "The Informer," about the Irish resistance. It was made into a British (ironically) film in 1929, and then a more famous (and highly regarded) 1935 John Ford film. This tranferrance to the Black Revolution, with parallels to the Black Panthers in their insistence that guns are necessary to real revolution, is strong and interesting, and it comes straight from the period, without the filters and aesthetic distance that a later film would have not avoided. I have to say this is a beautiful film. Almost every scene is at night, and the stark interiors and dramatic exteriors, with layers of light and rain and sweat (and a notable early scene in the shower) make it really sizzle. Cinematographer Boris Kaufman really gets it. It's vivid just on visual terms (including a 720 degree camera spin after a shootout, another at the end). He shot "On the Waterfront" and "Baby Doll" and "Long Day's Journey into Night" for just three classics. However, it isn't uniformly thoughtful, and an attempt at some humorous surreal commentary at a funhouse is both fun and awkward. This is followed by a born-again street preacher who might seem believable to some but it seems more symbolic, and pushy. But then, this is followed a scene of family and friends in a big, quiet meeting where Tank arrives drunk, and the editing and filming seems to compare to the careful head shots in Dreyer's "Passion of Joan of Arc." Seriously. This is an almost entirely black cast, and set in squalid, cramped inner city situations. Look for fabulous performances by Ruby Dee (as a mother filled with dignity), and Rosco Lee Jones (as a homosexual), in addition to Tank, played by Julian Mayfield. For those who like blaxploitation films, this is more sincere and yet still filled with the exaggerations and details of urban Black America from that same era (or actually a few years before most of them).

I saw this movie when it was first released with my girlfriend (later, my wife). I would love to see it again but it seems to have disappeared. Not only can't I find a copy of this movie, I can't find anyone else who has seen it. If I did not have the sound track, I would start questioning if I saw it or not.

It was not a "great" movie but much better than many of the Black subject movies made at that time. I also saw the "Informer" from which this was taken but I prefer "Up Tight". I hope someone re-releases this movie. A generation has passed without anyone knowing that several "large", named stars acted in this largely unknown movie.

One thing about me and my love of movies is that I very rarely prefer remakes. However, this movie is an exception--a film far superior than the original. Now that might surprise you, as Victor McLaglen received the Oscar for Best Actor AND the great John Ford the Oscar for Best Director. Yet, I STILL liked the remake better. Much of it is that "The Informer" has not aged well and is dated. In particular, McLaglen's performance seems over-the-top--very, very unsubtle indeed. Also, while it's hard to imagine someone making a film better than John Ford, it's not as surprising when you learn that it's Jules Dassin--one of the best film directors of the 20th century but whose career was severely affected by the Red Scare--when he was forced to move to Europe and managed to STILL keep making great films.

Dassin decided to remake the story and set it in black America--in 1968. The film was VERY timely, and is set just after the murder of Martin Luther King--a time when black men and women were understandably talking about revolution. While the term 'Black Panthers' was never used in the film, clearly the film is intended to be about them...and their weakest link, a sad and worthless individual named Tank. Also, since time had past since Dassin's exodus from Hollywood, he was now able to return to the States to make a film and this one was made in Cleveland. This locale was great--adding to the realism. In addition, while most of the actors are unknowns (apart from folks like Roscoe Lee Browne and Ruby Dee), they did a great job--and Dassin got the most from them. Overall, a very hard-hitting and enjoyable film--and a nice update to the original.