Body and Soul
About Body and Soul
Escaped convict Isaiah T. Jenkins hides in Tatesville, Georgia, by posing as a reverend. With Yellow-Curley Hinds he skims the church collection. Jenkins wants Isabelle Perkins, who loves his estranged twin, Sylvester; both brothers are played by Paul Robeson. Her mother, Martha Jane, leaves Isabelle alone with the preacher. Isabelle flees to Atlanta with her mother's savings and, dying poor, tells Martha Jane that Jenkins raped her and made her take the blame. Martha Jane denounces him before the congregation. He kills a man in the flight. Martha Jane then wakes: the ordeal was a dream, and she stakes Isabelle and Sylvester so they can marry.
Cast & crew
More about Body and Soul
Oscar Micheaux produced, wrote, directed, and distributed it, from his own novel as well as the screenplay. The Motion Picture Commission of the State of New York refused a license, calling the nine-reel cut likely to incite crime, immoral, and sacrilegious. He re-edited it twice. The approved version runs five reels. That shorter cut is what survives; the nine-reel version is lost.
Themes
Background
Micheaux carried his own prints to Black theaters. White audiences largely did not see the film for years, while Black critics attacked the title cards' racial epithets and the refusal to flatter the congregation.
In film history
Robeson's first screen role is a twin study: a fake preacher who loots a Georgia church, and the poor brother Isabelle actually loves.
Making
Censors objected to a minister shown as a rapist and swindler. Micheaux's released cut makes Jenkins an escaped convict in a clerical disguise, and the surviving print frames the crimes as Martha Jane's dream.
Reviews
On Rotten Tomatoes the surviving cut has an 86 percent score from seven listed reviews. The New York State commission's 1925 rejection is the period verdict that changed the movie: it called the original immoral and sacrilegious.
Music
The film was silent. Wycliffe Gordon wrote a new score for the 2000 New York Film Festival screening, performed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
Preservation
The five-reel version approved in New York survives; a 35mm preservation element is at the George Eastman Museum, and MoMA has screened a 93-minute print from it. The original nine-reel cut is lost. Selected for the National Film Registry in 2019.
Notes
- Robeson, then 27, made his film debut in the dual role. His deal was $100 a week plus three percent of the gross after the first $40,000.
- He later kept his distance from the picture and often named The Emperor Jones (1933) as his first feature.
- Julia Theresa Russell, who plays Isabelle, was the younger sister of Alice B. Russell, Micheaux's wife. This is her only known film.
- It is one of three Micheaux silent features known to survive, out of about 26 silent productions.
- In 2000 the New York Film Festival showed it with a new score by trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, played live by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
- The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2019.
Scenes
- Jenkins, posing as a reverend, clears the church sisters out of the room so he can be alone with Isabelle.
- Dying in Atlanta, Isabelle tells Martha Jane what Jenkins did.
- Martha Jane wakes and the night's crimes dissolve.
Also available
- Internet Archive (body-and-soul_202107)
- Kino Lorber, Pioneers of African-American Cinema (2016)
