Aristocratas Velados

Offering criticism for this 91-year-old film is like shooting fish in a barrel - the dialogue is stilted, the acting is terrible, and the static camera conveys no life. On top of it, the quality of the print which survives is poor, entire scenes or bits within scenes are missing due to damage or local censorship, and the result is a bare bones story with abrupt transitions and frequent audio skips. It's the polar opposite of 'polished,' and is frustrating at times to watch, even at just 44 minutes.

On the other hand, the film touches on important subjects, that of 'passing' as a black person in white society, and class differences within the community that end up being based on how light or dark-skinned someone is.

Oscar Micheaux was conservative in some ways, and indeed we see here one character saying they must all strive to achieve, which while having a point, also comes across as the old "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" argument. He was also progressive in ways that went beyond representing black people on the big screen or condemning the KKK and D. W. Griffith in The Symbol of the Unconquered. Here he makes it clear that while there is a group of "select and elite colored" people in the town, the young woman is right to marry not only for love, but right to be proud of being black. The explicitness of this message was decades ahead of its time and must have had a degree of power to the black film audience at the time; for that, he deserves credit.

I seriously wonder what cuts the Virginia Censorship Board imposed on this film, after having objected to its silent version five years earlier and in a state that had passed the "one drop" rule in 1924 (that is, any single ancestor in a person's ancestry, a single drop of "black blood" meant the person was black). By filming this story, as creaky as it is when seen today, Micheaux was in a way questioning these racist laws, how ridiculously arbitrary one's skin tone and genetic makeup were being defined, and pointing out that it was harmless for black people to intermingle with white people and have a path to upward mobility. Those were alarming concepts to the status quo, and I wish all the dialogue had survived, even if it would have been delivered poorly by this mediocre cast.

Here's something that did survive, which despite the derogatory term used by one of the black servants, I confess I chuckled over as a 1932 version of "Once you go black, you never go back": "Honey, when they once love a spade, ain't nobody can take them away from 'em." "Mmm-hmm, and I bet he's a dark one too."

These same servants (including Donald Lambert at the piano and Mabel Garrett as the second vocalist) then perform three song and tap dance numbers over 6 minutes, which was a treat. Aside from simply being entertaining, I wondered why this sequence might be in the film, placed where it was. I thought it might be Micheaux's way of providing a contrast to the more staid musical performances earlier in the film with the society people at a ballroom dance. Despite being on the bottom rungs of society, there is joy and power here - just look at that sassy little look Garrett gives the camera at the end of the last number. To me it seems not random, but in keeping with the main story, and another element of Micheaux prefetching James Brown, "I'm Black and I'm Proud." It almost bumped my review score up a half tick - but the final scene, with the return of its wooden acting, reminded me of how rocky this had been.

Having read the book and watched the film, I can definitely say that Micheaux is exploring Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille territory here by adapting a novel into a film. Unlike the novels that Hitchcock and DeMille adapted, this novel tells a story from a black perspective. Actually, in comparison with DeMille and Hitchcock adaptations of the early 1930's, I think this film worked quite well.

When we think of old cinema, we think of all-white casts, with non-white people relegated to servants and entertainers. What you might not have known was that there was a group of African-Americans who had their own movie industry.

I learned of Oscar Micheaux from Melvin Van Peebles's documentary "Classified X" (whose title referenced the rating slapped on Van Peebles's "Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song"). Van Peebles noted Micheaux's importance in cinema, despite the general neglect of his work for most of history.

I've finally seen one of his movies. "Veiled Aristocrats" is a partially lost film, with only two reels surviving. It focuses on an African-American man who has managed to pass as white, now returning home to hook up with a woman.

While it has a good plot, a lot of the acting comes across as stilted. As for the lousy production value, we can forgive that, as Micheaux simply didn't have the resources that Hollywood did. I guess that I would recommend the movie as a historical reference, but it's not the sort of movie that leaves you feeling satisfied.

I'll make this short: I've seen better actors in high school plays. They were embarrassingly bad in every way. I know that back in the day, the directors wanted the actors to face the camera a bit, but this entire movie had them facing the camera instead of each other. Just a bad all around movie. And that one line spoken by the maid... how did it go? "Once you love a Spade, you'll never go back"? Really bad dialog. I don't understand who would produce (pay for) a movie like this because everyone knows that only Black people went to see these movies, and all this would do is upset the Black community. Anyway, I know there were good Black actors in those days and why he didn't use them is beyond me. Don't waste your time with this one. There are plenty of good Black movies out there.

Veiled Aristocrats (1932)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

John Walden (Walter Fleming) has been away at college for many years where he passed himself off as a white man. He eventually returns home and learns that his sister Rena (Lucille Lewis) is dating a very dark colored man. John tries to convince her that it's best to pass herself off as being white even if that means turning her back on their mother.

Oscar Micheaux's VEILED ARISTOCRATS is another one of the director's films where he's preaching. Yes, this film was meant to tell black people not to be ashamed of who they are and to live life as who they are and not something that they're not. For decades this film was lost and then a two-reel version turned up. Finally another version turned up and runs for 48-minutes but I'm not sure if this is complete or not. I'm going to guess that it's still missing some footage as the film seems very uneven at times.

With that said, even if the film had been complete I'm not sure it would have made a different. I've gone through the majority of Micheaux's work that isn't lost and I must say that it seems this here might have had the lowest budget of anything I've seen. Technically the film is very ugly at times and there's no question that many of the performances leave a lot to be desired. It's hard to be too critical of the filmmaker because it was 1932 and there just wasn't much funding for these types of race films so Micheaux pretty much had to do whatever it took to get a film out there.

It's also worth noting that many of his films ran into issues with the censors so there's no question that the director was simply behind the eight ball. With that said, as poor as this film is, if you're a fan of these race movies then you'll still want to check it out but the director has better out there.