|
|
|
Lost Boundaries
Reprinted by permission of Donald Bogle from his film reference
work, Blacks in American Films & Television: An Illustrated
Encyclopedia (Simon & Schuster)
|
|
|
A young light-skinned doctor (Mel Ferrer) and his pretty Negro
bride (Beatrice Pearson) plan to live in the South where he
will work at a local Negro hospital. But their plans go astray
because the Negroes in the area cannot "relate" to so
high-yaller a pair. Eventually, the couple moves to a bright,
cheery white New England town. There they live and pass
as whites for some twenty years. He sets up a successful
medical practice, tending to white patients. They rear a son
and a daughter as whites. They become upstanding integral parts
of their white community. And at heart, the two are having a
very good white life of it - until, naturally, one day
their deep dark secret is revealed. Why they are Negras!
In no time, their world falls apart, as they are shunned by
their white neighbors. The film, however, ends on a note of
fake racial reconciliation when the town's white minister
preaches a sermon to his white townspeople. Afterward it looks
as if the guilt-ridden townies are ready to accept their former
friends, leading us cynics to believe they've decided to
forgive these good people for having those nasty teensy-weensy
drops of negra blood.
One can easily make light of Lost Boundaries
[1949] today. Despite the fact that it was based on a
true story, much about the film is dated and hokey. It actually
insists that we believe the unacceptable: the two are rejected
by their black community because they look too white. This, of
course, is absurd. In the late 1940s and 1950s, light skin,
straight hair, and keen features were valued in the black
community, and these people would have had no real problems.
But it is intended that we believe the couple has been driven
away from the Negro South. There is also a Harlem sequence (the
son of the couple, upon learning he is Negro, goes in search of
his people) - quite striking in its day - that now may be of
dubious value.
Most unacceptable is the casting of white performers in the
black roles for purposes of audience identification. In such
films as Pinky, Lost Boundaries, and the various
versions of Show Boat, all made to please large white
audiences, not black ones, whites could better identify and
sympathize with the struggles and torments of real
whites on screen, who were being treated as if they were
colored.
With the various compromises and cop-outs aside, Lost
Boundaries, however, is still affecting. And it was well
received upon its initial release. In The New York
Times, Bosley Crowther said it was done with "extraordinary
courage, understanding, and dramatic power...its statement of
the anguish and the ironies of racial taboo is clear, eloquent,
and moving." Time hailed it as "not only a first-class
social document but also a profoundly moving film." And
Variety wrote:
"This is a document lit up by an urgent message and expressed
in eloquently simple cinematic phrases...a personal tragedy
that will impinge on all filmgoers irrespective of color. The
emotion of this story is so irresistable that it continually
breaks through the restraint of the film's subdued and even
flat documentary tone...It also shows that the U.S. film
industry, having once decided to tackle the most explosive
issue in the U.S., is capable of extraordinary courage,
intelligence, and human sympathy."
Today, Lost Boundaries's semi-documentary stle (it was
shot inNew England on a budget under $600,000 and, as was the
case with Intruder in the Dust, real townspeople of the
area appear in bit roles) and the low-key, often naturalistic
performances give it a weight, a poignancy, and a new
feel not present in Hollywood's studio products of the time.
And also as was true of the other problems of 1949, its basic
determination to confront the racial question in America puts
it in a special class and category all its own. The earnestness
of the movie endures.
An important film in the history of black cinema in American.
Producer: Louis De Rochemont, Borden Mace, Lothar Wolff
Director: Alfred L. Werker
Screenplay: Furlaud de Kay, Eugene Ling, Charles Palmer, Virginia Shaler, William L. White
Cinematography: William Miller
Film Editing: Dave Kummins
Art Direction: Herbert Andrews
Music: Louis Applebaum, Carleton Carpenter, Albert Johnston Jr, Herber Taylor
Cast: Beatrice Pearson (Marcia Carter), Mel Ferrer (Scott Carter), Richard Hylton (Howard Carter), Susan Douglas Rubes (Shelly Carter), Canada Lee (Lt. Thompson), Robert A. Dunn (Rev. John Taylor).
BW-100m. Closed captioning.
 
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
TCM Imports - November Schedule
Travel to other parts of the world without leaving your home in our festival of international classics that includes Black Orpheus (1959), set in Rio, and the French comedy, Mon Oncle (1958), starring Jacques Tati.
MORE >
|
|
TCM UK
| 
TCM Spain
| 
TCM France
| TCM Latin America
| TCM Asia
| TCM Germany
TCM.com is part of the Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network.
