Rashid Johnson, “Thurgood in the Hour of Chaos,” 2009 (photograph: Rashid Johnson/Brooklyn Museum)
Brooklyn Museum, Robert E. Blum Gallery, first floor
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Through October 8, $10-$16
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
lynchinginamerica.eji.org
There are only a few more days to see the Brooklyn Museum’s shattering “The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America,” a searing, must-see collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative and Google that looks at the past, present, and future of the lynching of blacks in the United States. The exhibition is built around a series of short EJI videos in which such men and women as Anthony Ray Hinton, Thomas Miles Sr., James Johnson, Mamie Lang Kirkland, Dee Dee Johnson, and Vanessa Croft share their personal stories about how members of their families were lynched, visiting graveyards and the trees from which the innocent victims were hanged as well as making comparisons between lynching and black and brown men who are or were on Death Row despite substantial evidence against their guilt. The oral histories are vividly photographed by Melissa Bunni Elian, Kris Graves, Raymond Thompson, Andre Wagner, Bee Walker, and Rog Walker and are utterly haunting, ending with explanatory notes from EJI founder and executive director Bryan Stevenson. (To further the discussion, EJI will be opening a national monument in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2018 called the Memorial to Peace and Justice.) The exhibition also features related works from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, including Elizabeth Catlett’s “I Have Special Reservations,” Jacob Lawrence’s “Harlem Street Scene,” Kara Walker’s “Burning African Village Play Set with Big Hour and Lynching,” Rashid Johnson’s “Thurgood in the House of Chaos,” Theaster Gates’s “In Case of Race Riot II,” Jack Whitten’s “Black Monolith II (For Ralph Ellison),” and Titus Kaphar’s “The Jerome Project (My Loss),” which explore slavery, segregation, the civil rights movement, and modern-day racism. A kind of companion piece to such films as Ava DuVernay’s 13th and such books as Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, the exhibit is a powerful, gut-wrenching experience that visitors walk through in near-silence — when I went, the only talking was between a white father and his young son, who whispered that he wanted to know what various words and images meant, and the dad told him, thoughtfully and directly. It was a microcosm of what should be happening more today, expanding the conversation about America’s Original Sin.
The extraordinary story of beloved Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas is intricately documented in Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s warm and intimate Chavela, opening at Film Forum today. Chavela’s life might seem an all-too-familiar archetype, the tale of a powerful female vocalist, a lesbian performer whose career was wrecked by the lethal combination of a heterosexual macho society, personal demons, and addiction, but Chavela avoids stereotypes and instead delivers a very human portrait. Born in Costa Rica in 1919, Chavela had an unhappy childhood and ran away to Mexico when she was fourteen to pursue a singing career and live a freer life, able to explore her sexual orientation as she grew older. “Her own parents saw her as a strange girl. They realized she was a boyish girl,” composer Marcela Rodríguez says. “Her movement, her hands, and her body language were manly.” Her longtime partner, human rights lawyer Alicia Pérez Duarte, adds, “Chavela created her persona in a very macho world.” Chavela dedicated her life to her music while keeping much of her personal life private — the film drops little more than tantalizing hints about her relationship with artist Frida Kahlo and an evening with Ava Gardner — and her commanding presence and powerful vocal style quickly made her a star in the 1940s and ’50s. “Hers wasn’t a sweet, crystal clear voice,” says cabaret owner Jesusa Rodríguez. “And she always sounded like she’d been torn apart, as if she’d been born with the wounds of life and death.” But at the height of her fame, those wounds started catching up to her as she began drinking heavily, resulting in a fifteen-year hiatus during which many people thought she was dead. The film centers around a never-before-seen 1991 interview Gund conducted with Chavela upon her return to singing, as she speaks more openly and honestly about her sexuality, her family, and her career. She’s a riveting figure, confident and determined, ready to face the world again. “We all have to live in the present. Don’t think about yesterday or tomorrow. Today,” she says.
The film that gave Bruce Springsteen the title for one of his greatest songs is not one of Robert Mitchum’s best, although it was one of his most personal. The story of moonshining families in the backwoods of Tennessee was cowritten and produced by Mitchum, who also wrote the theme song, “The Ballad of Thunder Road,” and his sixteen-year-old son, James, plays his brother, Robin, a part originally meant for Elvis Presley. Robert Mitchum is Lucas Doolin, a daring transporter of illegal whiskey. Robin soups up his cars, giving them extra juice and an escape hatch for the moonshine in case the treasury agents, led by the determined and dedicated Troy Barrett (Gene Barry), catch him. When gangster Carl Kogan (Jacques Aubuchon) decides to take over the local trade, the whiskey runners are caught in more jeopardy, from both sides of the law. Meanwhile, Luke is in love with singer Francie Wymore (Keely Smith) but is being chased by Roxanna Ledbetter (Sandra Knight), who fellow transporter Jed Moultrie (Mitchell Ryan) is sweet on. With its opening authoritative voiceover about taxation and “the wild and reckless men” who work in the moonshine trade, the movie makes its message clear; these transporters are not heroes, and they must pay for their crimes. Director Arthur Ripley, who specialized in short films and television episodes, cannot maintain the story even for its ninety minutes, and although Mitchum is strong and sturdy in his role, James and Smith are not up to the task. There are some fine driving scenes, but the film plays too much like government propaganda, although that didn’t stop it from becoming a drive-in favorite over the years.
Edward Dmytryk’s 1947 socially conscious noir classic, Crossfire, has one of the great opening scenes of the genre, a fight that begins in shadows, plunges into darkness as a lamp is knocked over, and finally, in a sliver of light as shadows dominate the screen, J. Roy Hunt’s camera focuses on a man lying on the floor, dead. The rest of the film traces what happened that night, from the discovery of the perpetrator to how to catch the killer. There’s a fascinating twist to the story involving bigotry and hatred that is timely and relevant, involving anti-Semitism; in fact, the film was adapted by John Paxton based on screenwriter and director Richard Brooks’s novel, The Brick Foxhole, in which the victim was gay, but that had to be changed because of the Hays Code. World War II is over, and a group of recently discharged soldiers are in Washington, DC, trying to redefine their purpose in the aftermath of four years of battle. A night of drinking ends in the death of Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene), and police investigator Finlay (Robert Young) is on the case, speaking with the calm and disciplined Sgt. Keeley (Robert Mitchum) and the defensive and shifty Montgomery (Robert Ryan). The initial evidence points to Corporal Arthur Mitchell (George Cooper), who can’t remember all of the details of the night of the murder. After leaving Samuels’s apartment — also there were Monty and soldier Floyd Bowers (Steve Brodie) — the drunk and confused “Mitch” met up with tough-talking taxi dancer Ginny (Gloria Grahame), but she wants to stay out of the investigation completely. While Keeley tries to get to the bottom of everything without the police, Captain Finlay is not about to let them handle this by themselves. 
Robert Mitchum redefined himself in Charles Laughton’s lurid story of traveling preacher/con man/murderer Harry Powell, who has the word “love” tattooed on one set of knuckles and “hate” on the other. While in prison, Powell bunks with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who got caught stealing $10,000 — but the only person who knows where the money is is Ben’s young son, John (Billy Chapin). When Preacher is released from jail, he shows up on the Harpers’ doorstep, ready to woo the widow Willa (Shelley Winters) — and get his hands on the money any way he can, including torturing John and his sister, Ruby (Gloria Castillo). Laughton’s only directorial effort is seriously flawed — the scenes in the beginning and end with Lillian Gish are wholly unnecessary and detract from the overall mood. Stanley Cortez’s cinematography is outstanding, featuring his unique use of shadows, an intense battle between light and dark (which plays off of several themes: old versus young, rich versus poor, good versus evil, men versus women), and some marvelous silhouettes. Based on Davis Grubb’s 1953 novel, the film has made its way onto many best-of lists, from scariest and most thrilling to all-time great and most beautiful.
One of Hollywood’s first forays into the Japanese underworld has quite a pedigree — directed by Sydney Pollack (coming off his success with The Way We Were) and written by Robert Towne (who had just scribed Chinatown and Shampoo) and Paul Schrader (his first writing credit, to be followed by Taxi Driver). Robert Mitchum stars as Harry Kilmer, a WWII vet who returns to Japan thirty years later to help his friend George Tanner (Brian Family Affair Keith), whose daughter has been kidnapped. Kilmer thinks he can just walk in and walk out, but things quickly get complicated, and he ends up having to take care of some unfinished business involving the great Keiko Kishi (The Twilight Samurai). Kilmer and his trigger-happy young cohort, Dusty (Richard Logan’s Run Jordan), hole up at Oliver’s (Herb “Murray the Cop” Edelman), where they are joined by Tanaka (Ken Takakura) in their battle against Toshiro Tono (Eiji Hiroshima Mon Amour Okada) and Goro (James Flower Drum Song Shigeta) while searching for a man with a spider tattoo on his head. There are lots of shootouts and sword fights, discussions of honor and betrayal, and, in the grand Yakuza tradition, the ritual cutting off of the pinkie. Oh, and there’s Robert Mitchum, of course, a cinematic giant who towers above it all.
