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THE KLANSMAN (1974)
DYNAMIC DVD (region 0)
d. Terence Young; pr. William Alexander; scr. Millard Kaufman, Samuel Fuller; novel. William Bradford Huie; ph. Lloyd Ahren; m. Stu Gardner, Dale O. Warren; ed. Gene Milford; cast. Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell, OJ Simpson, Lola Falana, David Huddleston, Linda Evans (112 mins)
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Blaxploitation and the Civil Rights Era
The early 1970s saw a sudden boom in Afro-American exploitation cinema.
These so-called blaxploitation films were racially charged, violent and usually urban set action movies with an often political polemic concerning white racist oppression and violent black retribution. For many, they sat uncomfortably in the post-Civil Rights era. Hollywood, surprised by the popularity of this genre, was torn over how to respond and if to integrate it into its own box-office rationales. Thus, there were several efforts seeking a social or historical pretext in which to set their explicit atrocities. These films thus straddled the line between exploitation and racial melodrama. Amongst them was the strange The Klansman, co-scripted by auteur Samuel Fuller and attracting such star names as Lee Marvin and Richard Burton. However, Fuller eventually backed away from directing the film and the task fell to British journeyman Terence Young, whose critical misfortunes showed no signs of alleviating. The location shoot was greeted with enthusiasm by local residents, happy that such big names and Hollywood enterprise had come their way, but this quickly became intense vitriolic displeasure when they were shown the final film. Indeed, such a reception would follow the film as it became one of the most detested and offensive of 1970s big studio releases and was accused of pandering to the very racist audiences it pretended to indict.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
The Klansman takes place in a representative small town American South, run ostensibly by businessmen and politicos affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.
A sheriff (Lee Marvin) is called on to act when a white woman (Linda Evans) is raped by a black man. Marvin interrupts an angry mob and arrests a suspect, taking him to jail. However, the mob cannot be so easily abated and so drive alongside two innocent black men. They catch one of them and kill him violently, an event witnessed by his friend (O.J. Simpson). Simpson is determined to exact revenge and subsequently begins to pick off the Klansmen one by one. Evans is ostracized and eventually taken in by the resident Southern aristocrat (Richard Burton), an idealistic drunk who has a friendship with a black female Civil Rights activist (Lola Falana). Burton is resented by almost everyone for his progressive views on race relations although he regularly chats with Marvin. When Simpson claims another victim, Klansmen led by the deputy sheriff (Cameron Mitchell) arrest Falana and rape her. Community pressures are coming to bear on Marvin and the peacekeeper convinces Falana to say that she was gang-raped by black men. However, Falana tells Burton the truth. When an effort to buy out Burton’s estate and get him to leave fails, the Klan in turn intend more violent means and so Marvin must explain to his friend the social realities of the South.
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Inept, Sexploitative Wallow in Violent Racial Tension
The Klansman is an uncomfortable viewing experience. From the outset it is clear that director Young intends to take to task the Christian authority with which such racism is so easily propagated yet despite his obvious relish at exposing such hypocrisy he seems almost indifferent to craftsmanship.
As a result, the film does indeed explore many of the underlying issues of racial oppression but talks about them in clumsy dialogue and dramatizes them only in the manner of pandering exploitation. This balance of highly-charged politically discursive dialogue and gleeful violence is finally similar to, though more explicit than, the Billy Jack films then popular. Yet it is a film of reaction, obsessed with how white men in the South attempt to deal with the social, cultural and racial changes of the Civil Rights movement. It appropriates the violent conventions and politics of blaxploitation but is forever drawn to contextualize this within a “white” frame of reference. The finale becomes a symbolic battle between the more progressive South (Burton, Marvin and his son) and the old, bad South (the Klan) for the right to determine the future of race relations. Despite the efforts of black activists and militants (the lone gunman Simpson) it is essentially a matter of white responsibility to determine the black revolution: the film is torn about this as when the responsible Marvin finally cannot kill Simpson, Marvin himself must die for this choice.
Although Young is intent to reveal the pettiness of racial resentment he also suggests an underlying socio-economic rationale to the ways in which Southern society benefits from the continued oppression and scapegoating of the black man.
The perpetrators of racial violence are ignorant, semi-literate oafs wholly ingrained with the sense of their innate racial superiority as their only means of empowerment. Their hatred is thus easily manipulated and goaded into awful action out of the perceived threat to their precarious sense of “power” in their social order. That this oppression is accompanied by Christian sanction is the greatest irony. Yet Young is so full of contempt for these people that he neglects to dramatize their social reality beyond dialogue inferences and token scenes and they remain barely characterized morons. His attention instead rests on those in positions of social leadership, particularly Marvin as the man with a responsibility to the values of the community that elected him but with a greater ethical awareness of social justice and human rights. Responsibility is the issue here. Young holds those in intermediary positions of petty power (Mitchell) as the most dangerous and that their violence is inherently a means of keeping a social underclass in their presumed place – the fear of racial equality. The film holds that purgative violence within white authority for the regulation of black empowerment is the inevitable outcome.
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The Generic Impoverished South
The transfer is in 4:3 fullscreen. Picture quality is never better than VHS: black levels are murky, colours are dull and an overage of orange-red predominates in many scenes making the transfer seem smudged.
Young’s visual style is indifferent despite the odd high and low angle juxtaposition, his contempt for the characters, the film and even his intended audience showing through. He is callous, resolutely ugly in design although revelling in the ways in which the Klan has appropriated Christian iconography – hence crosses, Klan colours and churches frequent the film. Differences in costume and behaviour between blacks and whites define their respective subcultures and class. Although depicting an impoverished society, the film establishes only a generic “South”. Racial oppression saturates the movie but the censorship choices are questionable: the cut print used here removes the violence by whites against blacks. Cutting these scenes robs the film of not only the ambiguity inherent in its spectacle but lessens the responsibility of the Klan as the perpetrators of such violence. The removal of the rape scene in particular negates the film’s attempt to depict both the glee in Klan violence and the awful pettiness behind it: it denies the shocking consequences of white racism rather than removing an offensive experience. The final scenes of a Klan induced Hell on Earth are effective in context.
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Racial Slurs and Christian Refrains
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital mono. It too reveals the defects of a worn source, with background hiss, frequent pops and static at reel change moments and apparent splice points.
However, it at least does preserve most of the score – one of the intriguing facets of this movie. Indeed, it is the score that is the real cue to the film’s irresolute nature: it begins with an ironic refrain concerning the “Good Christian People” but is subsequently used most noticeably in action scenes wherein it is reminiscent of the funk in black action movies. This gradually signals the intent to transpose the material of blaxploitation onto the South but to invert the genre’s political agenda into a dramatization of white response and responsibility more than Afro-American responses: to appropriate the genre. But in doing so, the film risks appealing to the same redneck elements that Young also hopes to indict. In a talky and dull film, voices are plays on authority. Dialogue is riddled equally with racial slurs and Christian refrains. Ambient effects are minimal, reserved for larger moments – gunshots work well as indicative of violent justice. The script attempts to elucidate the points underlying racism but is riddled with a disturbing, even gleeful racist humour. Vocal mannerisms indicate race and class: however, Burton is drunk throughout and fumbles over his lines. A drum roll seeks to enhance the impending conflict of the final scenes.
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THIS FILM IS NOT YET AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY
USA DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Klansman 16x9 Version Widescreen TV
UK DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: The Klansman [DVD] [1974]
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