Though its plot is ultimately concerned with the decades-spanning tragicomic travails of a white show-business family, James Whale’s film adaptation of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1927 musical Show Boat is bookended by the voices of black men. Its first line is spoken—or rather shouted—by an unnamed black townsperson (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) excitedly greeting the arrival of the variety-show steamship Cotton Blossom as it docks in Natchez, Mississippi. And in the very last shot of the 1936 film we hear the stirring bass baritone of Paul Robeson as he sings a brief reprise of Show Boat’s signature tune, “Ol’ Man River,” over a picturesque shot of the Mississippi’s waters with the sunlight dancing in its currents. In between, we see a surprisingly nuanced, if at times woefully dated, attempt to depict the complexities of what W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified as the problem of the 20th century: the color line.
The second (and best) of three film versions of Kern and Hammerstein’s landmark stage musical—itself adapted from the sprawling 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber—Show Boat paints racial segregation not as an impassable wall of separation, but as a constant negotiation between the dominant white society and communities of color. This is perhaps most evident in the figure of the Cotton Blossom’s star attraction, Julie LaVerne (Helen Morgan), who’s forced out of the show when it’s revealed that, though she’s been passing for white, she’s in fact biracial and thus her marriage to the show’s white male lead, Steve Baker (Donald Cook), runs afoul of Mississippi’s strict miscegenation laws. Though the couple is able to avoid charges when Steve lies to the local sheriff, Vallon (Charles B. Middleton), assuring him that he, too, has a drop of black blood in his ancestry, the two must quickly flee lest the racist locals catch wind that black and white actors are sharing the stage.
This plotline illustrates the consequences of overstepping the color line: By attempting to do so, Julie precipitates her downward spiral into divorce, poverty, and addiction. Her departure from the show makes room for the fresh-faced—and undeniably white—daughter of the riverboat’s proprietors, jolly Cap’n Andy Hawks (Charles Winninger) and shrewish Parthenia (Helen Westley), to take her place. Magnolia (Irene Dunne) will share the riverboat stage with her paramour, Gaylord Ravenal (Allan Jones), a charming gambler masquerading as an aristocrat. But she gets her first real break years later, when she auditions for a powerful Chicago producer with “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” a traditional African-American tune she’d been taught as a teenager by Julie, who also gives up her own role in the production to make room for Magnolia. The show will help vault her into international superstardom.
Julie’s relinquishment of her career to benefit Magnolia’s is played as a noble act of sacrifice, but it’s troubling in its implications: An impoverished and undeniably talented actress of color—we’ve just seen her deliver a show-stopping performance of the bluesy torch song “Bill”—gives up on herself so that a young white up-and-comer can have a chance at a lucrative career singing black songs. The scene is even more queasy when one considers that Julie is played by a white actress, and while Morgan, a member of the original Broadway cast, delivers a beautifully melancholic, world-weary performance that’s informed by her own struggles with addiction, her casting is indicative of the ways that Broadway and Hollywood have historically appropriated black music while depriving black people of the chance to perform it.
Another earlier sequence, added specifically for the film, drives this point home: Magnolia, dolled up in blackface and strumming a banjo, sings “Gallivantin’ Around,” a minstrel number written in a demeaning caricature of a black dialect. The sequence, like all of the showboat stage performances we see in the film, is intentionally crude, filled with hokey handmade effects, such as a stuffed duck sliding on a wire to simulate flight. The joke in this sequence is at least partially on the cornpone audiences who flock to the Cotton Blossom’s shows, but that doesn’t make it any easier for a contemporary viewer to swallow. This absurd, mortifying spectacle of a white woman pretending to be black for the amusement of a mostly white audience shows what an acceptable crossing of the color line looks like in this period. While it may be essentially illegal for Julie to present herself as white, when Magnolia garishly playacts as black, that’s entertainment! This vulgar blackface routine leaves a particularly bitter taste in one’s mouth when juxtaposed against the genuinely resonant numbers performed by the film’s black actors, including the most famous and still stirring song in the film: Joe’s (Robeson) plangent performance of “Ol’ Man River.”
Joe doesn’t sing his tune for anyone other than himself. Lazing on a haybale and whittling a stick, the song is an expression of his sorrow at the lot of black people living along the river who are forced to work “while de white folks play.” Like most of the film’s musical sequences, the moment is simply staged, with neither the extravagance of a Busby Berkeley number nor the virtuosity of an Astaire/Rogers routine. Rather, Whale employs the pure language of cinema to highlight the drama of the song, starting with the camera spinning nearly 360 degrees around Joe before moving in for a close-up on his face. To illustrate the lyrics, Whale intercuts expressionistic shots of toil and suffering that evoke the gloomy mood of the legendary horror films he made for Universal, such as Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. By the end of the sequence, Joe has been joined by a chorus of black townsfolk, expanding this solitary sigh of lament into a powerful elegiac anthem for the entire black South.
As a filmmaker, Whale was unusually fond of the moving camera, often finding ways to integrate cinematographic motion into scenes that other directors of the era might have covered in simple static long shots. In one of the most eloquent moments in Show Boat, Whale uses his trademark fluid camera to distill the entire racial dialectic undergirding the film into a quick series of shots. Early in the film, as the Cotton Blossom troupe parades through town upon their arrival in Natchez, we see a dolly shot surveying a group of white townspeople followed by a nearly identical shot of a crowd of black locals. These parallel shots highlight the rigid segregation of the town while also hinting that these two seemingly distinct groups may not be so different after all. Whale achieves a synthesis in the next shot, in which we see Julie and Steve in a medium shot riding through town. With extraordinary elegance, Whale suggests that some people don’t fall so easily into either side of this supposedly binary racial divide.
As in every iteration of Show Boat, the film suffers from a muddled second act, when the plot moves away from the boat itself and gets bogged down in the frankly dull romantic tribulations of Magnolia and Ravenal. But unlike the lavish 1951 MGM adaptation of the musical directed by George Sidney, which pushes aside its black characters as much as possible to focus on the insipid white romance between the two, Whale does everything he can to streamline this plotline while enhancing the roles of Joe and his wife, Queenie (Hattie McDaniel). The two share a comic number, “Ah Still Suits Me,” written just for the film that plays on the comedic dynamic between the ostensibly shiftless Joe and the nagging Queenie, but throughout the number, Whale frames the actors in portrait-like close-ups that hint at depths to the characters, as if picking of the lyrics’ slack. The result is a far more memorable sequence than any of Magnolia and Ravenal’s blandly sentimental duets.
If the plot concludes with one such tune—the duo reconciling and reprising their signature song “You Are Love” after decades apart—Whale refuses to give these white characters the last word. Their faces fade out as a shot of the Mississippi River fades in with “Ol’ Man River” bellowing one last time on the soundtrack. Magnolia may find a success that would never be granted to a black man like Joe, but it’s his voice that sticks with us long after the credits roll.
Image/Sound
Previously released by Criterion on laserdisc back in 1989, Show Boat receives a belated but more than welcome update to Blu-ray with a brand-new 4K restoration made from the film’s original 35mm camera negatives. The film looks sharper and more stunning than it has since its premiere over eight decades ago. Crowd scenes—such as a bustling New Year’s Eve party scene—reveal a remarkable level of detail and depth of focus captured by cinematographer John J. Mescall’s lens. The picture is noticeably grainy at times, though this is rarely distracting. There’s no hint of judder in the film’s many moving-camera sequences, and there is a pleasing level of contrast, particularly striking in some of Whale’s more expressionistic shots. The remastered monaural soundtrack is presented in uncompressed form, and while the audio is occasionally slightly tinny and evinces a slight background noise, this is expected given the source material. Overall, however, there’s a robust bass presence, most evident during Robeson’s singing, which is booming and satisfyingly full-bodied.
Extras
Criterion’s release places James Whale’s film in the context of the musical’s many different permutations: from novel to stage to screen to radio. The extras offer a chance to understand how the story has evolved and changed over many different productions. Musical historian Miles Krueger’s wide-ranging audio commentary has been carried over from Criterion’s original laserdisc release, and it remains a truly edifying presentation some 30 years on, particularly for its detailed comparisons of various versions of the musical.
Speaking of which, three additional adaptations are represented here: Harry A. Pollard and Arch Heath’s 1929 part-talkie and two radio plays. For the 1929 version, Criterion has provided a 20-minute segment of silent scenes from the film with additional audio commentary from Krueger, as well as four musical performances filmed with the Broadway cast, including white actress Tess Gardella in blackface playing the role of Queenie. (A fifth performance originally included in this prologue no longer exists.) These segments were tacked onto the completed silent film as a prologue to take advantage of the wide popularity of the stage show’s songs and provide a useful look at how the original production was staged. Two hour-long radio plays are also included. The first, from 1936, is produced by Orson Welles for The Campbell Playhouse and features Welles as Cap’n Andy, Morgan as Julie, and Show Boat author Edna Ferber as Parthenia. The second, from 1944, was recorded for The Radio Hall of Fame and includes Allan Jones and Charles Winninger reprising their roles from the 1936 film.
Additional special features highlight particular aspects of the film. A 20-minute interview with Whale biographer James Curtis situates the film within the director’s all-too-brief body of work, while an interview program entitled “Recognizing Race in Show Boat” features academic Shana L. Redmond grappling with the film’s complicated depictions of the segregated South. Redmond’s analysis resists conclusive statements about the work and tends to raise more questions than it answers. The disc also includes Saul J. Turell’s 1979 Oscar-winning short documentary Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, which was previously included in Criterion’s Paul Robeson box set. The film has been newly restored for this release, and while it offers a compelling introduction to its subject, it downplays the true radicalism of Robeson’s political commitments. A sweeping essay by critic Gary Giddins rounds out the set, incisively combining historical information and formal analysis with a playful prose style that suits the film’s balance of light entertainment and heavy themes.
Overall
Criterion not only lovingly restores a neglected classic, it offers an invaluable reference guide for lovers of the groundbreaking stage musical.
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