Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)

(On Cable TV, June 2022) Both obvious and transgressive, Thomasine & Bushrod is a film that would benefit from being more widely known. Existing at the intersection between Blaxploitation, revisionist western and the New Hollywood standard of criminal-lovers-on-the-run, it feels at once like a far more modern film than it is, and yet a film that could only come from the 1970s. Much of the story can be fairly summed up as “black-cast Bonnie and Clyde western” and that’s already intriguing enough. It gets better once you realize that the film was directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. (of Superfly and Three the Hard Way fame), that it’s written by co-lead actor-producer Max Julien, and that its viewpoint character is clearly the woman lead played by the magnificent Vonetta McGee. As I write this, the hottest black-cast film of 2021 is The Harder They Fall, which prides itself on being a revisionist black western with strong female roles – so it’s interesting to dig back fifty years and find another very similar film that doesn’t often show up in discussions. Now, let’s be honest — Thomasine & Bushrod is more interesting than good: Despite the overt progressive intentions of the film, the execution often falls back on obviousness, formula and last-minute reversion to tradition. The film’s stated intention to steal from the rich white in order to give back to the poor black is undermined by a moralistic ending that harkens back to the requirements of the Production Code, and also makes the film undistinguishable in this regard from many, many other outlaw-lovers-on-the-run films brought to screens around that time. The film itself does remain worth a watch, though – it still feels daring, McGee looks superb and the film occasionally gets a great moment or two. Thomasine & Bushrod is certainly worth adding to anyone’s deep knowledge of 1970s cinema, just as Blaxploitation was momentarily opening a few unusual doors for black representation in film.