'Hollywood Black' review: Engrossing cinematic survey

WHAT IT'S ABOUT This four-hour survey of Black cinema — directed by filmmaker Justin Simien — was "inspired" by the 2019 book by Donald Bogle (whose 1973 history on the subject is a film studies classic). He and Simien also appear on-screen along with many others who (in MGM+'s words) "each fought for their place on the page, behind the camera and on the screen." They include: veteran host W. Kamau Bell, directors Reginald Hudlin, Ryan Coogler ("Creed," "Black Panther"), Gina Prince-Bythewood ("Love & Basketball"), Ava DuVernay ("Selma"), and stars Issa Rae, LaKeith Stanfield, Gabrielle Union and Forest Whitaker.

(The first hour is available to stream on Amazon Prime and after that, $6.99 to subscribe to MGM+.)

MY SAY As both director and writer, Simien made his bones with 2014's "Dear White People" — which later became a Netflix series— and closes his first documentary with what he calls a "Dear Black People" postscript. It's a passionate cri-de-coeur where he "dares" future filmmakers to "bring your [own] crazy reality" because in Hollywood "you have every right to do so and you need to do so…"

Nice sentiment but (you might reasonably respond) this is Hollywood, Justin — what have "needs" or "rights" or (for that matter) "dreams" got to do with anything?

In fact, over these four hours, you'll be surprised just how much. Any survey as oceanic as this one needs expert guides and Simien has assembled some particularly effective ones. They also happen to make his point. Movies really are the stuff that dreams are made of, and their own wouldn't have happened unless someone else had dreamed them in the first place. "Standing on shoulders" is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot over these four hours; you'll quickly understand why.

Hudlin calls this long fraught history a "boom and bust" one but it's an action-and-reaction one too. The silent era — indeed the entire history of movies — effectively begins with "Birth of a Nation," then pioneering Black director Oscar Micheaux would spend the next 30 years (from 1919 to 1948) trying to reverse its damage. Half his oeuvre of 44 films has been lost while "Hollywood Black" says that some 500 other so-called "race pictures" have "turned to dust."

The "race picture" was a parallel universe to the major studio factory line, also where Black audiences could avoid the mainstream minstrel stereotypes that predominated right through to the "talkie" era — which itself launched with "The Jazz Singer."

A backlash began in the '30s when stars like Fredi Washington and Paul Robeson entered the mainstream but quickly left — the "bust" of Hudlin's cycle. Then, in the late '40s, the so-called "problem picture" arrived — with racism as the problem to be solved and which Hollywood had so long reinforced.

Sidney Poitier ("The Defiant Ones") and Dorothy Dandridge ("Carmen Jones") were the genre's leading man and woman but it was Poitier (1963 Oscar winner for "Lilies of the Field") who both opened the possibilities and floodgates. Blaxploitation, the "hip-hop movie" era, and mainstream acceptance all followed. From that genres begat other genres, including experimental, Black queer cinema, and even "anti-mainstream" (Julie Dash's 1991 "Daughters of the Dust" is just one example explored here).

"Hollywood Black" covers all this and much more but there are omissions — and surprising ones. Will Smith, for example, is scarcely acknowledged but that other recent Oscar controversy ("Oscars So White") gets full treatment in the fourth hour. Television is ignored entirely too — reasonable enough because that's a fraught and oceanic subject in its own right.

But what's here is fascinating, and Simien is right — dreams have everything to do with this history, and with the future too.

BOTTOM LINE Engrossing history (and with an eyebrow-raising omission).