Murder in Harlem

This film was the inspiration for Micheaux to write 'The Story of Dorothy Stanfield' eleven years later. The story is actually about her husband, Nathan Stanfield, who is living in hard times as a black medical doctor. It touches some very sensitive issues.

Okay, in spite of what some of the other reviews may tell you, this is basically a really bad movie. But it is blessed with some features that make it sporadically fascinating in spite of its frequent bouts of ineptitude. First of all, the cast is not good. Some of the acting is painfully wooden, particularly from the leading lady. To give them their due, they've been handed some very stiff and unnatural dialogue. The best members of the cast clearly did some ad-libbing rather than stick to the clunky text.

It's also poorly directed and edited. This has nothing to do with the fact that it needs some significant restoration. It's also obvious that it was done on a shoestring budget, but that can't excuse all of its technical and artistic flaws. There is one scene where the camera attempts a simple maneuver, but then chops off the tops of the actors' heads and then jerkily and belatedly returns to a more workable composition. The script is an interesting mess -- very slow and dull in spots, but then weirdly non-linear and unpredictable in others. I couldn't tell if it was an early attempt at a Rashomon or Pulp Fiction- like experiment, or if it was merely disjointed and awkward. Perhaps a little of both.

But it's interesting for a few other reasons, one of which is the excellent musical interlude around the midpoint, when the leading lady visits a speakeasy. Willie "The Lion" Smith is among the performers, and the music is terrific. Surprisingly, the technical quality of the soundtrack is not bad.

I also liked it for some of its fairly raw explanation of the race relations of the era. It's quite up front about the fact that blacks are second-class citizens, and everyone agrees that a black man who turns to the police for any sort of help is basically a chump. None of the many slicker and better movies of the era would have been so blunt about these sorts of things.

Anyway, it's good weird fun to watch, if you can get past the dullest scenes (the endless sequence between the boss at the chemical plant and the watchman he bribes comes to mind). Some of the bad acting is hilarious enough to be worth the effort.

Before watching this film and certainly before judging it, there are things you should bear in mind. First, the quality of the actual celluloid leaves much to be desired, and the film jumps in places. Secondly, although by 1935 blacks had already made an enormous impact on American popular culture, this was primarily through music. Oscar Micheaux, who made this, was a rarity, so although by 2015 standards this low budget monochrome leaves much to be desired, it was not a bad effort for the son of a slave, even if he had been making films for more than a decade.

Yes, the script is a bit wooden, and the extended absurd cameo at the beginning about the book salesman is superfluously irrelevant and then some, but this was based on Micheaux's own experience. The film itself is a thinly veiled reworking of the murder of Mary Phagan by Leo Frank. Although there have been repeated attempts over the past hundred years to absolve Frank of this crime and put the blame on his Negro sidekick, the complete documentation from the case has now been placed on-line, and it is difficult to conclude otherwise than that fanciful as Jim Conley's story may sound, he was telling the truth.

That being said, certain agenda-driven special interest groups continue to beat the drum of anti-Semitism, with the absurd implication that in 1913 a low class Negro was higher up the food chain than a white, college educated businessman. Those same mischief-makers were very active when this film was made, so it is possible that the twist in the end of the story was formulated by Micheaux to avoid problems with distribution.

Murder in Harlem (1934)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A black watchman is doing his rounds when he stumbles across the body of a white woman. He calls the police but he's eventually arrested for the crime. Soon a lawyer is on his case trying to find out who was really behind the crime.

MURDER IN HARLEM is a fairly entertaining race film from director Oscar Micheaux who was of course the leading black director during this period. A lot of times the race films from this era didn't feature any white people but that's not the case here as the director was allowed a pretty good cast as well as an interesting story to work with.

Obviously, the director was still hampered with a very low-budget that didn't allow much technical advantages. The cinematography is the biggest issue here and especially during a few scenes where the camera zooms towards the actors, cuts off the top of their heads and then has to re-arrange the shot. Of course, normally you'd be asking for a second take but that wasn't possible when you're working with this type of budget.

The one big advantage this film had over several of the early sound films from Micheaux is that the performances were very good. Dorothy Van Engle gets most of the praise for her performance as the girlfriend and rightfully so as she comes across quite strong and certainly helps carry the picture. Clarence Brooks, Andrew Bishop and Alec Lovejoy all add very good support.

MURDER IN HARLEM is a very good example of a race movie that could have been so much more had it had the budget and technical advantages of what was going on in Hollywood. As it stands, the film is certainly very much worth watching but one can only think of what it could have been.

I believe that Oscar Micheaux is one of the most prolific and uncredited Director of our time. Today, many do not know about this African American Director who became the First Independent African American Movie Director. Oscar Micheaux had his own marketing machine when it came to production of his movies. Beginning in the 1920s, Oscar Micheaux began to create a new market, the African American movie goer.

Not only did he make "Murder in Harlem" on a shoestring budget, he also made movies that dealt with the era. Oscar Micheaux singlehandedly got African-American movie goers into the movie houses. Oscar Micheaux taught the new cinema goer what they should expect from a movie. Micheaux addressed African American life in his movies and gave the viewer something to be proud of. Yes, in some of his movies we saw characters such as Lincoln Perry (the lazy servant character), but we also saw strong professional characters such as: Robert Earl Jones (Father of Actor James Earl Jones),William Graves (The Attorney Actor), Lorenzo Tucker (Movie Heartthrob) and Francine Everett(Our African American Beauty).

Too some viewers, "Murder in Harlem" isn't one of Micheaux' best efforts, however, to me, Micheaux played to the themes of life in Harlem. Affluence and Poverty, Professional Life and the Underworld. Good vs. Evil. See this movie when you get a chance!!!