It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In his provocative 1980 article in 'Film Comment', 'Bad Films', James Hoberman concentrated almost exclusively on Oscar Micheaux's thirties sound films in painting Micheaux as a sort of black Edward D.Wood Jr. When Hoberman wrote that "the longer Micheaux made films, the badder they got," the 1993 Library of Congress restoration of 'Within Our Gates' was still several years away, but - possibly because Micheaux was free of the later encumbrances of dialogue and sound film technology - manages accurately to bear out his statement, since it stands up extremely well.The fact that nearly a hundred years ago this film was made at all is remarkable enough; that it's actually survived (in Spain, of all places) is miraculous, particularly as Micheaux's final film, the three hour-long 'The Betrayal' (1948) - made over a quarter of a century later - is ironically lost. In addition to its indictment of institutionalised racism in the United States - where in the South any available negro could be lynched just for the hell of it - 'Within Our Gates' is also remarkable for criticising bible-thumping snake oil salesmen like the black preacher Old Ned, who exhorts his congregation not to bother themselves with the injustices of this world as their reward will come in the next.Micheaux not surprisingly gives short shrift to the American South, where the poor white trash are depicted as being treated as contemptuously by the land-owning classes as their black brethren (the identical appearance and beards worn by a trio of yokels hinting at in-breeding), and titles are written in dialect to lampoon the Southern drawl, rather than just black speech as tended to be the custom in silent films. The cross-cutting between a lynching and a rape attempt by a white man near the film's conclusion serves as a well-aimed raspberry at the equivalent sequence in D.W.Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation'; although the abrupt uplifting speech about America by the handsome Dr. Vivian at the film's very end feels extremely tacked on. But 'Within Our Gates' has already hit home with enough ugly home truths by then.American women, incredibly, still didn't have the vote when 'Within Our Gates' was made; and Micheaux equates women's suffrage with black civil rights, in the process marshalling a cast of formidable female characters, both black & white. In one of several elaborate narrative strands that 'Within Our Gates' packs into less than eighty minutes, black heroine Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) is taken under the wing of wealthy white philanthropist Elena Warwick, whose friend Geraldine Stratton is a rich Southerner and "a bitter enemy of woman's suffrage, because it appalls her to think that Negro women might vote."

The best word to describe this film is "amateurish". While it does have a central focus, the muddled, confused and confusing plot proceeds in fits and starts. Characters drop in and out of the narrative seemingly at random and sometimes change outlook right in the middle of a scene.Worse still, the film has been edited with a proverbial meat-ax. Odd bits and pieces of irrelevant action are often spliced without rhyme or reason into the movie, further adding to the viewer's difficulties in following the plot.Despite all obstacles, however, individual scenes do succeed. The lynch sequence exerts a terrible power because—whether by design or accident—it looks like an actual newsreel event.Acting too is mighty variable. Evelyn Preer does good work as the unsettled heroine, Bernice Ladd makes a forceful bigot, and there are two outstanding actors among the ranks of obvious amateurs in the support cast: E.G. Tatum and the uncredited Old Ned.Which brings me to the most amazing aspect of Micheaux' vision. "Within Our Gates" is a cry for justice, but no apologia. In fact it often seems to go out of its way to present a surprisingly warts and all take on African-Americans. The two men just mentioned, for instance, enact self-seeking traitors (and do so brilliantly). The little spiv, Jack Chenault, is a despicable criminal, and even the second female lead seems somewhat unsympathetic (especially in the film's original uncensored version which has unfortunately been lost).

"Within Our Gates" is of enormous historical interest as a remnant of a brief period in the early twenties/late teens when there were (due to segregation laws) films made and distributed specifically by and for African-Americans. In this way, it has most deservedly been chosen for placement in the National Film Registry.By today's standards the film is as silly, half-baked, and paper-thin as something by a high school playwright. The performances are pretty atrocious, but for the most part they are at home with the style of acting that pervaded films of the silent era.It dealt with provocative issues of the time, such as overt racism, lynching, and the sorry state of education for the black community. Eighty years later we may have done a bit of shoring up, but no one's foolish enough to say that we're doing any better today. One positive thing that can be said is that a film dealing with these subjects today is encouraged, whereas in 1920 "Within Our Gates" was crushed by disapproving educators, legislators, and spineless distributors.

I was deeply affected by parts of this story about the plight of negroes as told for negroes by negro director Oscar Micheaux. Ostensibly, it's about a woman who tries to help a poor southern school for negroes by getting financial help to supplement the meager amount the state provides, but it is laced with observations about racial prejudice. One bigoted southern woman living in the north is against the women's suffrage movement for fear that negro women will get the right to vote. And she expresses her negative sentiment about educating negroes: "Thinking will give them a headache." Micheaux gets more points across in the best part of the film, the flashback scene near the end prefaced with a title card "Sylvia's Story." We see how a negro preacher agrees with some condescending whites that the negroes should keep their place, but privately condemns himself for doing so, announcing that "negroes and whites are equal" to himself. We see how injustice reigns with a lynch mob and how the innocent, even an innocent bystander, can easily become victims of racial prejudice. The film is worth seeing for this sequence alone, providing images that caused me to lose some sleep. Micheaux also slips in comments about the negroes' accomplishments in the Spanish-American and Mexican wars and WWI, as if to bolster the low self-image of his negro viewers. The film may be primitive by some standards, but Oscar Micheaux tells a powerful story.The film was intended for negro audiences, but because of some controversial parts (rape and lynching) many exhibitors refused to show it, so very few saw it when it was released. This being the earliest surviving film made by an African American, it was placed on the National Film Registry and lovingly restored from the only surviving copy in Spain (see the alternative version listing for details). The Library of Congress is to be commended for doing such a fine job.