Before Blaxploitation and the kind of African-American cinema we are used to seeing today there were film-makers like Michael Roemer making films like "Nothing But a Man". Roemer may have been born in pre-war Germany but you would never know it judging from this ground-breaking film about what it was like to be black in sixties America and what, for many, it's still like to be black in America today.
It's a very simple film, almost documentary-like in its approach to its subject and at times almost crude in the way Roemer, who had no real experience in film-making, presents his material. Fundamentally it's a love story between Duff, (and excellent Ivan Dixon), and his school-teacher wife Josie, (the singer Abbey Lincoln), and this is handled without a touch of sentimentality. It's also superbly shot in black and white by Robert Young, who with Roemer also wrote the film, but it wasn't really a success, even in terms of small budget independent art movies and is consequently seldom seen these days. Worth checking out if you get the chance.
It's a very simple film, almost documentary-like in its approach to its subject and at times almost crude in the way Roemer, who had no real experience in film-making, presents his material. Fundamentally it's a love story between Duff, (and excellent Ivan Dixon), and his school-teacher wife Josie, (the singer Abbey Lincoln), and this is handled without a touch of sentimentality. It's also superbly shot in black and white by Robert Young, who with Roemer also wrote the film, but it wasn't really a success, even in terms of small budget independent art movies and is consequently seldom seen these days. Worth checking out if you get the chance.