Gordon Parks

  • A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) While Gordon Parks will forever be remembered for directing the blaxploitation classic Shaft, it actually takes more than an hour in A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks before the film even mentions Shaft, and even then, it’s as part of Parks’ directing career in general. No, this is a documentary that pays well-deserved homage to Gordon Parks’ photography, from his early days documenting criminals in New York City, to more ambitious assignments throughout his career. The most distinctive feature of director John Maggio’s film, fittingly enough, is spending a lot of time showcasing and sometimes analyzing (via the eyes of fellow photographers) what makes some of Parks’ individual photos so compelling. The lineup assembled to pay homage is impressive—sure, we can expect people like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay to be interviewed, but Anderson Cooper is a surprise. (The connection ends up being parental—Gordon Parks photographed Gloria Vanderbilt and kept in touch afterwards.) While the film generally takes a chronological approach through its subject’s life, it also comes with a speedrun through recent American history in matters of racial equality, and how Parks’ example continues to inspire others. The best parenthetical of the film focuses on Devin Allen, a photographer who picked up the camera from being inspired by Parks’ example and later had a picture reprinted on the cover of Time magazine. It’s impossible to dissociate Parks’ work from activist intent—as the title of the film (reprised from his autobiography) states, anyone who wants to create change has a choice of weapons—and Parks picked up the camera. This does add a lot of depth and emotion to the biopic, linking his work to much larger social currents and progress. Parks was not always well served by American society (as proven by Hollywood’s refusal to consider him a director of anything but black-themed projects) but he did far more than his part in trying to improve it. Shaft is far from being all of it.

  • Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) As much as I hailed 12 Years a Slave, it’s a useful footnote to know that Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey adapted, nearly thirty years earlier, the very same book describing how a skilled black man from New York State was lured, captured and sent in slavery for twelve years. This made-for-PBS telefilm was directed by none other than Gordon Parks, shot in the American South and was informed by several historians. It goes without saying that the material here isn’t quite as hard-hitting as Steve McQueen’s 2012 film—but for a TV audience, it’s eloquent enough and sometimes a bit more interesting in how it portrays slavery under three different masters, yet maintains the point of slavery’s inherent brutality. Park’s background as a photographer shows in the film’s better-than-average cinematography, and Avery Brooks does quite well as Northrup. It strikes me that this 1984 version could be used more widely in classrooms than the often-brutal 2012 film—but it’s well worth visiting for anyone. (One of the modern tragedies of slavery is that when it’s taught in schools, it often becomes a received subject without immersion in the real horrors of what it means to belong to someone else—emotional dives such as this movie make it all real far more real.)  It’s unfortunate that the film’s lower audiovisual quality persists today (even on TCM, which presumably has access to the highest-quality-available version), and that it’s practically forgotten by anyone without an interest in black cinema. I found it engrossing, especially when compared to the better-known version of the same story.

  • Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (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.

  • Shaft’s Big Score! (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) The original Shaft was a defining moment in Blaxploitation’s history, but it’s useful to remember that it was put together on a threadbare budget – producers weren’t sure that there was such a thing as a market for black-cast thrillers, and director Gordon Parks had to stretch his production money to make it look good. One year later, with Shaft’s Big Score!, it was obvious that there was money to be made from the character, and this sequel visibly has more money to play with – all the way to a climax involving a warehouse and an exploding helicopter. (Alas, even quadrupling the budget couldn’t get Isaac Hayes back to score the sequel.)  Parks being freer to execute his vision, the cinematography is more impressive as well – wide-scoped, more frequently outdoors, not quite as grimy as the first film. The flip side of that more assured approach, however, is that the rough-hewn charm of the original is lessened, along with its novelty: Shaft is an established quality here, and he behaves as if everyone is expecting more of the same from him. I’m curiously ambivalent about Shaft’s Big Score! – as someone who found the original film more scattered, gritty and unpolished than its reputation suggests, I appreciate the better production values of the sequel… but can’t deny its mechanical impression.

  • The Super Cops (1974)

    The Super Cops (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) If you want to talk about a blast from the past, have a look at The Super Cops, a rather joyous police comedy set in the desolate urban landscapes of early-1970s New York City. The plot has to do with two overeager buddy-cops taking down criminals and making busts by the dozen, earning the enmity both of their fellow cops, street hoodlums and internal affairs. While the setting is almost apocalyptic (NYC was in a terrible shape at the time), the tone of the film is considerably jollier than its setting, as our two fast-talking cops have a lot of fun while busting criminals, seizing drugs and making fun of their corrupt colleagues. The tone is resolutely upbeat, with plenty of references made to Batman & Robin along the way. Unbelievably enough, it’s based on a true story — but as the careers of those two real-life policemen shows (both were arrested for various reasons later on), viewers are justified in being skeptical of anything presented at face value. The result is… interesting, and not that far away from blaxploitation, considering that it’s directed by Gordon Parks. As of 2021, the film has a strange quality, exulting at the actions of two (white) policemen that can be seen as problematic in a broader context of drug legalization and community engagement. But as I said — The Super Cops is a blast from the past: unlike historical period pieces made today looking backward, we don’t get to choose what comes out of those older films.