Black Caesar
|  Larry Cohen’s Black Caesar wasn’t the first Blaxploitation film—it was preceded by a number of others, including Shaft (1971) and Shaft’s Big Score (1972), Blacula (1972), and Superfly (1972), to name just a few—but it was the first to be self-consciously made in the mold of the classical gangster film. When Cohen, who had been writing for television since the early 1960s but had only directed one feature film, 1972’s Bone, was approached by the exploitation production mill American International Pictures about making a black action film, he had already been working on the idea of reimagining the tragic gangster narrative, which was rooted in outsider ethnicity, from an urban black perspective. It didn’t hurt, either, that The Godfather (1972) had been released a year earlier to extensive critical acclaim and massive box office success (Black Caesar’s tagline on the one-sheet poster, written almost as large as the title, was “Godfather of Harlem!”).For the title role, Cohen originally envisioned Sammy Davis Jr., although it was probably best that he ended up casting former professional football player Fred Williamson. Williamson had already played small roles in a handful of Hollywood films, including Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), and headlined two Blaxploitation films, The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972) and Hammer (1972), the latter of which cannily played on his football nickname “The Hammer.” Although not a particularly great actor, Williamson had a natural screen charisma that allowed him to oscillate between laid-back cool and explosive rage. Cohen recognized that a major part of the Blaxploitation genre’s appeal was the way in which it allowed black characters to act out against representatives of the white power structure, and even if Tommy, like all classic gangsters, ultimately meets a tragic end, he takes a lot of bad whiteys down with him. When we first meet Tommy, he is a teenage shoeshiner working odd jobs in Harlem for various criminals. He makes the mistake of tangling with McKinney (Art Lund), a viciously racist and corrupt Irish cop with aspirations to be police commissioner, and he spends the next 10 years behind bars. When he emerges from prison, which he recognizes as an opportunity for criminal education (just one of the film’s many, many jabs at the corrupt nature of the American justice system), he is ready to build his own crime syndicate, which he begins by assassinating a rival mobster as a means of getting in with the local Mafioso. Working with his brainy childhood friend Joe (Philip Roye), a fraudulent minister (D’Urville Martin), and a conniving lawyer (William Wellman Jr.), Tommy begins to amass power, taking control of various neighborhoods and keeping his rivals in check by threatening to expose their dealings with police, judges, and other officials via a set of ledgers he has stolen. Along the way he picks up a girlfriend, Helen (Gloria Hendry), a lounge singer who lives in constant fear of his violence. With its title evoking the classic Edward G. Robinson-starring Little Caesar (1930) and Williamson’s character’s name evoking the antihero of the James Cagney-starring The Public Enemy (1931), there is no doubt that Cohen’s primary goal was to reimagine the familiar beats of the classical gangster film through the lens of black ghetto life in Nixon-era New York, which is seen primarily as a series of dilapidated buildings and trash-strewn alleyways. Black Caesar benefits substantially from the location work in and around the city, which was a hallmark of Cohen’s ’70s films. It adds a sense of authenticity to the story, which at times strains credulity, especially in the way Tommy is able to commit so many brazen acts of violence in broad daylight without attracting any real attention. Cohen, who pulled triple duty as writer, producer, and director on only his second film, is a cagey artist who has a good sense of when to play the material straight and when to go for excess. He makes smart use of James Brown’s memorable soul-funk soundtrack, cannily playing the refrain “Paid the cost to be the boss” when Tommy is both ascending and descending. He attempts to push the film in several melodramatic directions, adding subplots about Tommy’s relationship with his mother (Minnie Gentry) and his estranged father (Julius Harris), which help to mitigate, at least somewhat, Tommy’s otherwise brutal, unrepentant nature. Like many a violent gangster (including Johnny Depp’s recent portrayal of James “Whitey” Bulger in Black Mass), Tommy may be a violent psychopath, but he genuinely loved his mama. Understanding his audience, which consisted primarily of young urban blacks, Cohen packs the film with retributive violence as Tommy undercuts the power of the various racist white characters who, even in his presence, feel perfectly comfortable pointing his the supposed inferiority of blacks. Tommy takes it with a smile, and then unleashes, which offered a powerful cathartic experience for viewers who were accustomed to seeing black characters in primarily subservient roles. Not surprisingly, the films features one of the Blaxploitation genre’s most memorable scenes when Tommy paints McKinney’s face black with shoe polish, forces him to sing “Mammy,” and then beats him to death with a shoeshine box. Black Caesar is not a political movie per se, but it certainly taps into the raging sense of racial injustice that the Civil Rights Era had not managed to fully eradicate.
Copyright ©2015 James Kendrick Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick All images copyright © Olive Films / 20th Century Fox / MGM | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Rating: 
(3)
