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 Cotton Comes to Harlem 1970, 97 minutes Directed by Ossie Davis written by Ossie Davis and Arnold Perl  Cotton Comes to Harlem begins with a charlatan preacher named Deke O'Malley who is proposing a capmaign called Go Back to Africa for the residents of Harlem selling certificates that claim to guarantee the holder to land in Africa. Deke is unquestioningly loved by his community so they eat it right up. Officers Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are literally and figuratively not buying what he's selling. Suddenly during his demonstration a group of robbers come and steal the money from the sales of the certificates. Coffin and Jones pursue the perpetrators through the street who drop a bail of raw unprocessed cotton from the back of their truck. The robbers get away and the cotton goes ignored initially but later the pursuit begins and now everyone is out to find it.  Before Shaft, before Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song there was Cotton Comes to Harlem. This movie would become the template for blaxploitation films through the 70s. A lot of the conventions of thhe genre can be traced back to Cotton Comes to Harlem. The characters, the fashion, the lingo, the sense of humor, the plot beats. It's all here. While This movie is not as radical as Sweet Sweetback, which would arrive not long after, it is still radical for the time. The entire focus was on black protagonists and the almost entirely black cast. The white cops in this movie only begrudgingly accept Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, their competence is frequently questioned despite them being the only competent police in the film. The white officers are universally portrayed as ineffectual, apathetic, or outright bumblers. And yet Jones and Johnson are made to prove themselves. What the movie is saying is not subtle and few films of up to the time were this confrontational in that way. There is one scene where the neighborhood is protesting the arrest of Deke O'Malley and a group of young white liberal men show up and shout over the voices of the black residents. The film's depiction of Harlem was very noteworthy too. It's neither demonizing nor glamorizing the place. It's just showing it to you which is something that hadn't really been done before. Many of the extras and bit players were people who actually lived in the neighborhoods where the film was shot. It's one of those movies where the place you're seeing feels alive as if the setting is a character in and of itself. It feels like a time capsule.  Movie of the Month list
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Apr 1, 2020 06:01
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Debbie Does Dagon posted:"Down South, we sweat and strained, we were the prisoners of Cotton, but when cotton comes to Harlem, we kick cotton's rear end!" The 70s were a sort of golden age of car chases. That's a pretty strong start for the movie too not just because the chase is cool but because it's like a fast paced tour of the setting.
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Apr 6, 2020 06:26
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Krazyface posted:Watched it. I loved Coffin Ed; the man just has this disgust for everything except for getting the deacon. Do you mean why was he there or why did he pick the single worst disguise of all time? He was there for the money.
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Apr 16, 2020 21:27
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