Instead, Poitier rears back, the film cuts out and a scowling De Carlo returns on screen holding her face. It hardly mattered if the scene was as straightforward as Sidney Poitier backslapping Yvonne De Carlo in Band of Angels, which escapes the mature rating by jump-cutting past the moment of impact. Early on, censors wouldn’t hesitate to write off a Black film as “adult entertainment” if Black and white people physically interacted. What becomes clear fairly early on is putting Black people on film (much less centering them) was incredibly risky business. And his definitive history draws added credibility from cameos by Samuel L Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, Zendaya and other luminaries. Over the 135-minute runtime, Mitchell – a prolific writer, lecturer and podcast host – deftly cobbles together the story of each film into the larger narrative of representation. The filmography alone will have you wondering why there isn’t a movie channel devoted to looping gems such as Odds Against Tomorrow (about an ex-con pulled into one more big heist) or Uptight (a Black revolutionary take on The Informer). Mitchell zooms in on precisely this fragility as writer-director of Is That Black Enough for You?!?, a new Netflix documentary exploring Black Americans’ robust contributions to movies in the 20th century. So if one fails, then suddenly, the precarious grouping of dominos all comes down.”
“They’re still first and foremost Black movies. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a Black western or a Black musical comedy like Sister Act or a Black action franchise like Creed or a comic book film like Black Panther,” says the esteemed film historian Elvis Mitchell.
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