{"id":17767,"date":"2025-08-22T20:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T00:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=17767"},"modified":"2025-08-18T18:08:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T22:08:53","slug":"nothing-but-a-man-1964-michael-roemer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/17767","title":{"rendered":"Nothing But a Man (1964, Michael Roemer)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Low-budget realistic dramas with lyrical photography weren&#8217;t a whole genre back then, so this must&#8217;ve stood out when it premiered, winning three prizes at Venice the year of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/9169\">Red Desert<\/a><\/em>.  For me that lyrical photography had to pull a lot of weight to carry the story of an idealistic hard-working union-loving Black man in a racist town\/country\/world, his hopes getting increasingly crushed.  He wanders off from his train work to marry a preacher&#8217;s daughter and settle into a factory job, but gets called &#8220;boy&#8221; by everyone and is fired for trying to start a union.  Blacklisted, tormented by whites all day, he finally throws his wife across a room then walks out to visit his deadbeat father just in time to see dad drop dead from alcoholism.  Good soundtrack!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/nothingbut.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Singing star Abbey Lincoln only acted in a few films: this, a 1968 Sidney Poitier joint, and as Denzel&#8217;s mom in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/16407\">Mo&#8217; Better Blues<\/a><\/em>.  Our Boy Ivan also starred in <em>Car Wash<\/em> a decade later.  His dad was in <em>Hell Up in Harlem<\/em>, and dad&#8217;s girl was the damn Oracle in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/14653\">The Matrix<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Low-budget realistic dramas with lyrical photography weren&#8217;t a whole genre back then, so this must&#8217;ve stood out when it premiered, winning three prizes at Venice the year of Red Desert. For me that lyrical photography had to pull a lot of weight to carry the story of an idealistic hard-working union-loving Black man in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410,450,3423,926],"class_list":["post-17767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1960s","tag-labor-union","tag-michael-roemer","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17802,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17767\/revisions\/17802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}