After a number of gifted black actors had established during the 1980’s that a crossover audience existed for films dealing with black subjects, a renaissance of black films and directors emerged.
During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, a substantial wave of serious black films entered the mainstream of American filmmaking, utilizing a growing number of African American talents—actors, writers, directors, and composers who managed to redefine the American cinema and expand its horizons to pay closer attention to black culture. The catalyst for this revolution—it was more than simply a trend—was the controversial success of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989)
These films grew out of the black urban experience and reflected the concerns and culture of African Americans in new and vital ways. What was especially significant was the mainstreaming of those concerns and the development of a substantial crossover audience. There had always been an ethnic audience for films treating African Americans, who earlier in the century had their own film industry that produced pictures outside the mainstream, starring black actors, made for black audiences in segregated theaters. That industry was separate but unequal, serving a limited market.
On occasion, Hollywood had experimented with novelty pictures starring African Americans, such as King Vidor’s Hallelujah (1929);
Stormy Weather (1943),
Carmen Jones (1954),
Pinky (1949),
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967),
Nothing but a Man dramatized the struggle of a black worker (Ivan Dixon)
During the early 1970’s, a trend for black films developed, led by Ossie Davis,
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970),
The number of films directed by African Americans increased in the early 1970’s, but each year brought only a few dozen. Clearly, a market was developing, but the audience was largely ethnic and the films produced were by and large regarded as “blaxploitation” pictures, sexually oriented films with a focus on action and violence. A substantial crossover audience was needed, and that was not to come until the end of the 1980’s, when the content of black films had developed. Film critics of the mid-1970’s were unsure about where black filmmaking would go or whether black directors would ever reach more than an ethnic audience.
The widening of the crossover audience took place during the 1980’s, thanks to the efforts of white filmmakers who were determined to make films that would treat the black experience honestly and were willing to risk experimenting with predominantly black casts. Leading the way was Norman Jewison
Another significant development was the rise of an increasingly large pool of gifted black actors with drawing power at the box office. Denzel Washington shot to prominence as a consequence of A Soldier’s Story, for example, as did Robert Townsend. Howard E. Rollins, Jr.,
The Cotton Club (1984),
Many of the popular stars of the 1980’s, both in film and on television, were black, reflecting mainstream acceptance. The Cosby Show
Independent filmmaker Spike Lee in 1991.
The transition from bebop to hip-hop culture can be dated to Beat Street (1984),
The black renaissance hit full force in 1990 in two separate but related ways, in films directed by mainstream directors who used black actors and in films directed by African Americans. One of the very best films of 1989, for example, was Driving Miss Daisy, directed by Australian Bruce Beresford
With a new generation of African American directors in place by the 1990’s, it became less likely that films dealing with black topics would be made by white directors. Spike Lee continued to stabilize his reputation with Mo’ Better Blues (1990),
Although still the most visible of black directing talents, Lee faced strong competition by 1991. The first to challenge Lee was Mario Van Peebles, whose New Jack City (1991),
The impact of the black renaissance in film was obvious in the other major black films released in the early 1990’s: Matty Rich’s Straight Out of Brooklyn (1991); Bill Duke’s A Rage in Harlem (1991), followed by Deep Cover, starring Laurence Fishburne
Talkin’ Dirty After Dark (1991). Other films in production in 1991 were released in 1992, such as Ernest Dickerson’s
Juice, extending interest in the problems of black urban neighborhoods, and Reginald Hudlin’s
Boomerang, which undertook to reinvigorate Eddie Murphy’s sagging career by starring him in a comedy-romance with Robin Givens, Halle Berry, Grace Jones, and Eartha Kitt. Boomerang was dominated by black talent; it was coproduced by Warrington Hudlin,
The black films of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s focused, to a greater or lesser degree, on black themes and issues. They reached mainstream audiences with something more than standard Hollywood blockbuster fare, and they showed that African American artists were providing many of the new ideas in American film.
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Bogle, Donald. Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood. New York: Random House, 2005. History of African Americans’ experience in the motion-picture industry in the first half of the twentieth century provides context for the achievements of black filmmakers in the 1980’s. Includes photographs, bibliography, and index. -
_______. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. 4th ed. New York: Continuum, 2001. Important volume by a black critic examines depictions of blacks in films. Chapters progress by decade. Concludes that even in the 1970’s, films featuring blacks often still used “degrading myths and clichés as well as . . . stereotypes to define the black experience” and American black movies remained “distorted and far from satisfying.” -
Corliss, Richard. “Boyz of New Black City.” Time, June 17, 1991, 64-68. Evaluates the explosion of black films in 1991 and credits Spike Lee with creating “the market for the black-movie rage.” Summarizes Lee’s career and profiles John Singleton, Matty Rich, Charles Burnett, Bill Duke, and others. -
Cripps, Thomas. Black Film as Genre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. Thorough and scholarly treatment of the earliest films made by African Americans for black audiences, with black creative roots in the persons of producers, directors, writers, or performers. Traces the “genre” from the silent period to the 1970’s. Singles out six films for in-depth analysis. -
Friedman, Lester D., ed. Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Collection of essays examines the treatment of ethnicity in American film. Mark Winokur’s “Black Is White/White Is Black” considers the“strategy of racial compatibility in contemporary Hollywood comedy.” Robyn Wiegman discusses “gender, race, and the bourgeois ideal” in an essay titled “Black Bodies/American Commodities.” Paul S. Cowen’s “Social-Cognitive Approach” offers a taxonomy of films involving ethnicity. -
Kroll, Jack. “How Hot Is Too Hot? The Fuse Has Been Lit.” Newsweek, July 3, 1989, 64-65. Examines the controversial nature of Do the Right Thing and the riot that Spike Lee dramatizes in the film. Asserts that, in attempting to be “both ingratiating and militant, Lee has done the wrong thing.” -
Leab, Daniel J. From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. Traces black stereotyping from the origins of the motion picture to the popularity of the so-called blaxploitation films of the 1970’s. Concludes that up to the mid-1970’s, except for a few exceptions—such as Sounder (1972), The Learning Tree (1969), and Nothing but a Man (1964)—“the film image of the black is as condescending and defamatory as it has ever been.” -
Leland, John, and Donna Foote. “A Bad Omen for Black Movies?” Newsweek, July 29, 1991, 64-65. Addresses concerns about violent outbreaks at theaters showing Boyz n the Hood, despite the film’s strong antiviolence message. Discusses the problem in the context of similar outbreaks of violence at the release of New Jack City four months earlier. -
Murray, James. To Find an Image: Black Films from Uncle Tom to Super Fly. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973. Discussion of the evolution of black cinema up to the early 1970’s by the first black critic to join the New York Film Critics Circle. Devotes separate chapters to Sidney Poitier (“The Black Superstar Finally Arrives”) and Ossie Davis, as well as to directors Gordon Parks, Sr., and Melvin Van Peebles.
The Jeffersons Signals Success of Black Situation Comedies
Do the Right Thing Establishes Lee as a World-Class Director