Xmastime Movie du Jour

Nothing But a Man.

I had never heard of this until it just came on Sundance a little while ago. The older I get, the more I seem drawn to movies made for $7 that nothing really seems to happen except slow, grinding self-awareness.

Supposedly Malcolm X's favorite movie. And it certainly helps when you have Motown doing the soundtrack. Apparently, mostly sat on the shelf for almost 30 years.

Old review from 1993 HERE.

Though the film was written, directed and produced by whites, it still manages to enter deeply into the humiliation of second-class citizenship. In one speech, Duff says of white men, "They can reach right inside you with their white hands and turn you on and off." "Nothing but a Man" shows what it is like to live without the basic necessities of dignity and respect -- what it's like to live under another man's thumb. Watching this film, which has sat on the shelf for so long, we are forced to confront not only what we were but what we are, how far we've come, and how far we still have to go.