In trying to understand this come-to-Jesus silent movie with the production values of a Sunday-School pageant made in 1933, we have to make some assumptions. We cannot assume the technical, aesthetic or fiscal standards of 2016, or even 1933. It was not made in those traditions, nor for those audiences. It was made for showing at Black revival meetings, to be shown on equipment that lacked decent sound and would be accompanied instead by a speaker and music. Its aesthetics rose not from cinema, but from 19th century Magic Lantern shows.
We sometimes forget that old technology does not go away the instant we acquire the new stuff. I was reading today that twenty years after I got Internet cable, there are millions of Americans still using America Online dial-up service. Likewise, magic lanterns did not go away the day after the Lumieres projected TRAIN ENTERING CIOTAT. New magic lantern shows were being produced at least into the 1920s. Certainly, large portions of the audiences that saw this movie in the 1930s were familiar with them.
This movie, painstakingly reconstructed by the Library of Congress from prints distributed among many canisters, is important. It is important because it is a sociological artifact of the 1930s, of the revivalist movement and of the struggling efforts of Black Americans to find their own place in American cinema. Yes, it is primitive. Yes, it fails in many respects as a good movie; its very existence shows that there were so few Black film makers in the era that even the bad news could make viable products, given the money to make them.
I just wish it were more interesting.