Veiled Aristocrats

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 I guess that I would recommend the movie as a historical reference, but it's not the sort of movie that leaves you feeling satisfied.

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.

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.

Oscar Micheaux is one of my motion picture heroes. I admire and respect him utterly for his drive and ambition, for his having produced motion pictures with black casts and crews and for black audiences when no one else was doing it.

But, bless his heart, the scripts were usually lacking, the actors were sometimes quite talented but not given dialog worth speaking, and too much of the technical aspects were ... just not there.

"Veiled Aristocrats" had so much potential: It was a serious and touchy topic with a brother and sister trying to "pass for white" to avoid racial discrimination -- a theme dealt with so much better in, for example, "Imitation of Life" (1959) and maybe worse in "I Passed for White" (1960).

When Turner Classic Movies presented "Veiled Aristocrats" Sunday, 24 July 2016, Professor Jacqueline Stewart was on hand with some explanatory material. I think she too admired and respected Micheaux, but she also said something I had never thought of: Micheaux and his films often suffered -- as did, of course, others -- at the hands of censors.

She said various locales had different standards and the bits that were cut out differed from place to place. And that varying censorship and resultant cutting were part of the reason prints of Micheaux movies and perhaps especially "Veiled Aristocrats" are now so choppy, with bits of scenes missing, and sometimes entire scenes.

"Veiled Aristocrats" suffers first, though, by often stilted dialog that even experienced and talented actors couldn't voice believably. These actors sometimes display good facial movement and emotions, but still stumble with the dialog.

"John" is played by Walter Fleming and apparently nothing else at all is known about him. He was a nice-looking man, even with that pencil-line mustache (somewhat popular in that time), and to me sounded an awful like Johnny Mack Brown, meaning maybe he came from Alabama or environs.

Since nothing else seems to be known about him, probably he didn't have much of an acting career, and I'm sorry we can't get more biographical information.

Many of the other performers probably could have had more success if segregation had not been the order of the day or if, conversely, all-black productions had had more financial support. That they didn't is our loss, black and white.

"Veiled Aristocrats" has a, to me, surprising amount of music, something I've never seen in another Micheaux film, and most of it seems just thrown in to stretch out the story. The music adds another level of scholarly interest, but not much else.

It's hard to recommend this film because the print is so terrible, the sound is so bad, and for the other difficulties I mentioned.

However, it is by Oscar Micheaux and therefore everyone ought to see it to know what work that pioneer created. At YouTube is a documentary that might tell you a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nNJfEDsXA

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.