Main Cast: Paul Robeson, Dudley Digges, Frank Wilson, Fredi Washington, Ruby Elzy
Release Year: 1933
Country: US
Run Time: 72 minutes
Plot
Adapted by DuBose Heyward from a Eugene O'Neill play, Emperor Jones is one of Paul Robeson's earliest and most powerful leading roles. Railroad porter Brutus Jones (Robeson) leaves his girlfriend Dolly (Ruby Elzy) in favor of Undine (Fredi Washington), but he soon leaves her too. Brutus is a master manipulator, liar, and swindler who murders his friend Jeff (Frank Wilson) over a crap game. He ends up on a chain gang, but escapes to Haiti where the white trader Smithers (Dudley Digges) buys his freedom. He then scams his way into a business partnership with Smithers and becomes rich. He plays tricks on the natives with a gun, proclaiming that only a silver bullet can kill him. The natives believe he is immortal and he declares himself emperor, holding a tyrannical rule over the people. They naturally revolt, and he is forced to escape into the jungle. Brutus disappears into the woods where he hears voices and sees visions, eventually leading up to his suicide. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
With his overpowering charisma and deep, captivating voice, Paul Robeson leaves a haunting impression as the conniving, power-mad Brutus Jones in this film adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play. While African-American critics of the day condemned the story's stereotypes (even while the African-American community itself embraced the film and Robeson), the truth is that none of the characters are really sympathetic, and that especially goes for Dudley Digges as slimy trader Smithers, the only important white member of the cast. The most unsympathetic character of all is Jones, who doesn't care whom he swindles, tricks, or murders to work his way up to influence and wealth. But as hateful as Jones is, Robeson also makes him fascinating. When the Emperor Jones creates his own downfall on the small Caribbean island he rules, Robeson's desperation and horror is chilling to watch (he's also helped in good part by the surreal cinematography of Ernest Haller, and the spooky, midnight-blue tinting of the black-and-white photography). For many years, The Emperor Jones was only available in truncated form because it had been edited for censorship reasons close to its release date (many of the racial epithets were considered extremely offensive). In 2001, the Library of Congress reproduced something close to the version that was originally released in 1933. As a result, this picture -- Robeson's talkie debut, and a minor classic -- can be seen with its full impact intact. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
Herman Rosse - Art Director, Joseph H. Nadel - First Assistant Director, Dudley Murphy - Director, Grant Whytock - Editor, Rosamond Johnson - Composer (Music Score), Frank Tours - Composer (Music Score), Frank Tours - Musical Direction/Supervision, Ernest Haller - Cinematographer, William C. DeMille - Producer, John Krimsky - Producer, Gifford Cochran - Producer, Herman Rosse - Set Designer, Joseph I. Kane - Sound/Sound Designer, DuBose Heyward - Screenwriter, Eugene O'Neill - Play Author
The film is based rather loosely on the play, adds an entire backstory before O'Neill's actual play begins, and includes several new characters that do not appear in it (such as Jones' wife, and a friendly priest who advises him to give up his evil ways). Some people consider the movie to be just a vehicle for showing off Robeson's musical talent (he sings a number of times in the film). However, the film does provide what may be Robeson's greatest dramatic performance in a movie, considered by many to be worthy of an Oscar nomination that it did not receive.
In the film version, the opening shots are of an African ritual dance, staged to represent the "primitive" black world to which Brutus Jones will eventually revert. A quick dissolve takes us into a Baptist Church in the American South, where the dancing of the congregation presents an image that argues for a continuity between the "savage" Africans and the ring-shout Baptists. Such suggestive editing may be the kind of element that causes viewers to suspect the film of racism.
Similarly, the film makes copious use of the word "nigger," as did O'Neill's original play. African Americans criticized O'Neill's language at the time, so its preservation and expansion in the film present another cause for critique. Given Robeson's subsequent career as a Civil Rights activist, the spectacle of his character using the term so frequently in regard to other blacks seems shocking today.
As for the plot, Brutus Jones has just been hired as a Pullman Porter, a job that served the upward mobility of thousands of African American men in the first half of the twentieth-century. Jones proudly shows off his uniform to his girlfriend Dolly (and the film's audience), setting up the contrast with the later scenes in which "the Emperor Jones" parades around in overdone military garb. But Jones is quickly corrupted by the lures of the big city, taking up with fast women and gamblers. One boisterous crap game leads to a fight in which he inadvertently stabs Jeff, the man who had introduced him to the fast-life and from whom he had stolen the affections of the beautiful Undine (played by Fredi Washington).
A stint on the chain-gang allows the film its first opportunity to show Robeson without his shirt on, an exposure of male nudity unusual for 1933 and certainly for a black actor. Here and later the director plays on Robeson's sexual power and, implicitly, on cultural stereotypes about the libidinal power of black men. Jones escapes the convict's life after striking a white guard who was torturing and beating another prisoner. Making his way home, he briefly receives the assistance of his wife before taking a job stoking coal on a steamer headed for the Caribbean. One day, he catches sight of a remote island and jumps ship, swimming to the island.
The island is under the crude rule of a top-hatted black despot who receives merchandise from Smithers, the dilapidated white colonial merchant who is the sole Caucasian on the island. Jones rises to become Smithers' partner and eventually "Emperor." He dethrones his predecessor with a trick that allows him to survive what appears to be a fusillade of bullets, creating the myth that he can only be slain by a silver one. Jones's rule of the island involves increasing taxes on the poor natives and pocketing the proceeds.
The highlight is a twenty-five minute spoken monologue taken directly from O'Neill's play, in which Brutus Jones (Robeson), hunted by natives in revolt, flees through the jungle and slowly disintegrates psychologically, becoming a shrieking hysteric who runs right into the path of his pursuers.
DVD Release
In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[1] The film is in the public domain now, and can be purchased at many online outlets. A newly remastered version (with commentary and extras) was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection in 2006.
Similarities to Kipling story
Both the play and the film bear several striking similarities to Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. In Kipling's story, the main character also sets himself up as a godlike figure to the natives, proclaims that he can only be killed by a silver bullet, and tries to flee after the natives revolt against him.
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