Nothing But a Man

TCM is running another night of "The Black experience on film" nights tonight, although there's nothing on TCM's main page about whether anybody is sitting down with Ben Mankiewicz to discuss the movies. One of tonight's movies, Nothing But a Man at 11:30 PM, showed up on Martin Luther King Day so I had recorded it than and watched it now to do a post on.

Ivan Dixon plays Duff Anderson. He's working on the railroad in Alabama, work that pays fairly well but is also itinerant labor, having him move around the southern US. In the town where he's currently working, he goes into town one day and meets Josie Dawson (Abbey Lincoln), daughter of the local preacher. The two begin to fall in love, but you know that their relationship isn't going to be an easy one.

Part of this is because Duff is a railroad worker, meaning that he wouldn't be seeing Josie much if he kept working on the railroad. Josie's dad knows all this, and has seen Duff's type before, so he warns Josie that he's not right for her. But she won't listen, and Dad might be wrong anyhow.

Duff decides he'll quit the railroad and try to settle down, but finding a job isn't going to be easy for a black man in the early 1960s South. He gets one at a cotton mill, but the boss thinks he's trying to organize a union, so out the door he goes. Other places either aren't hiring or are too humiliating for Duff.

Josie should at least be able to bring in some income as the teacher at the local segregated school, but after she and Duff get married she gets pregnant, and you wonder whether she'll be able to keep working. Duff also has complicated personal problems of his own, having fathered a child out of wedlock in another relationship, with the baby mama deciding to marry another man and migrate north, leaving somebody else to raise the child. And Duff's dad is an alcoholic who's not long for this world. Meanwhile, Duff keeps encountering racism everywhere he goes.

I liked Nothing But a Man mostly because of its portrayal of Duff as a complex, fully fleshed-out human being who has real and serious flaws. It's a stark contrast with Hollywood's consistent use of Sidney Poitier at the time as the virtuous black man who was breaking down racism by being oh-so-perfect. The low budget also results in the film bein made in a much more cinema verite style, which again works and contrasts with most Hollywood portrayals of the South, even when they went on location. The low budget also meant that the acting is a bit uneven, but that doesn't really take away from the movie.

I'm glad I saw Nothing But a Man, and I hope you get the chance to watch it, too. It doesn't seem to be available on DVD, so you're going to have to catch the rare TCM showing.