The Little Colonel (1935)
(On Cable TV, January 2021) I usually watch and enjoy older movies on their own terms, but sometimes that doesn’t happen and I’m forced to power through them out of a sense of film history. The Little Colonel is, for many reasons, a difficult sit: Never mind the shaky technical qualities of a 1935 film, it’s an incredibly problematic film on issues of race. The portrayal of black characters is difficult to accept, and the sympathy that the film has for its ex-Confederate characters is troubling. On the other hand, well, The Little Colonel does feature two of the best-known black actors of the 1930s (Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Hattie McDaniels), and its famous interracial staircase tap sequence between Robinson and a young Shirley Temple attracted a fair amount of controversy in the racist US southern states, so much so that it was removed from southern-states showings according to the practices of the time. The film is still known for being one of Temple’s best showcases, and it does feature Lionel Barrymore in a leading role. There is also the ending sequence in which the black-and-white film transitions to colour, a still-striking transformation that remains one of the earliest uses of colour in popular feature films. Still, I found The Little Colonel a slog to get through—the melodrama is overdone, the pacing is tepid, the characters are not always likable and nearly every scene reminds us of the racism of the time. But so it goes: not every title in anyone’s film history appreciation regimen has to be interesting or enjoyable. At least I can now strike it off my list of what to see.
