Moon Over Harlem

     Moravian film director, Edgar G. Ulmer, well-known for making a slew of low budget quickly made films from 1930 to 1964, directed Moon Over Harlem (1939), shot in 16 millimeter over four days in New Jersey and New York City with a mostly African American cast.

     Musical numbers are very good, with the band Christopher Columbus and His Swing Crew, and "Sidney Bechet and His Clarinet," as it reads in the main titles.  Dancers in sexy costumes sway like trees in the wind in one scene, while main character Minnie's (Cora Green) troubled daughter Sue (Izinetta Wilcox in her only film) builds on her success as a singer and performer in Harlem's clubs and theaters, wearing fur coats by film's end, but losing her estranged mother to gunmen punishing her irresponsible criminal step-father, Dollar (Bud Harris).

     The film begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral.  Minnie and Dollar marry each other.  Soon, it's apparent that Dollar is a horndog, inflicting his desire for Minnie's beautiful daughter on a deeply alarmed young woman who has to fend the fucker off whenever she's alone.  Minnie catches the two of them in the middle of a clutch forced upon Sue.  Instead of browbeating Dollar, Minnie blames Sue and kicks her out of the apartment.  This leads to Sue's career as a singer but she's also unhappy.  

     Dollar, meanwhile, has ambitions to take over Harlem's crime racket, working on behalf of a shadowy White crime lord who's always shown from behind.  Dollar employs a pair of gunsels, "the Newark Boys," as debt collectors in Dollar's protection racket.  In one scene, a man who can't pay what he "owes," has to watch his wife get roughed up in front of him.  

     The Newark Boys pay a visit to Dollar, visiting on behalf of the White crime lord who's dissatisfied with Dollar's performance of his job.  In an argument, the Newark Boys fire their guns, hit Minnie fatally.  Dollar claims the homicide was committed by burglars, moves on breezily to the next woman, who also gets shot to death in another scuffle, along with Dollar and several others.

     Minnie's funeral, complete with beautiful singing by the guests and women needing to leave the room to weep, is a moving scene, the music stirring and uplifting although very sad at the same time.  

     Sue, back at the balcony with her love interest, just as at the beginning of the film, is back where she started, but there's a sense she'll move on from the pain and separation of the previous weeks, while Harlem's lights glow like night sky objects, the final shot an image of a full moon above the city, emerging from a cloud bank.

     It's an admirable little film in many ways.  The print I viewed on YouTube has a very hissy audio track for the first thirty-five minutes, but it suddenly clears up for the film's second half, making the movie's plot much easier to grasp.  I had a hard time understanding what was going on during the earlier part, but I kept at it because I trust Edgar G. Ulmer's work as a director, having seen his masterpiece Detour (1945).

     The film's Black cast is mostly very good, with Bud Harris as Dollar a standout.  Dollar, though despicable, is also compelling; an ambitious man with big ideas who nevertheless runs into trouble he can't surmount, making him a tragic figure.  

     In the 1930s it was rare to see a film treating African Americans as regular people, not as stereotyped characters.  The people in this film come across as real, flawed, noble, gracious, and human.  It's a shame it took Hollywood a few more decades to embrace this approach.

     IMDB offers a curious tidbit about Moon Over Harlem:

     "The Production Code Administration refused to issue an approval certificate for the film because the murderers were never punished and also for portraying a sexual relationship between a black man and a white woman."

     Another reason to admire Edgar G. Ulmer's work: he dealt realistically with the nature of human affairs.

Vic Neptune