Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
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Actor: Adam Arkin, Jack Johnson (VIII), Keith David, Philip Bosco, Samuel L. JacksonBrand: PBS
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 214 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-01-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Pbs Paramount
DVD Reviews of Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
DVD Review: Documentary filmmaking at its very best
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been a big fan of the work of Ken Burns ever since seeing his THE CIVIL WAR in 1990 on PBS, and have loved both his epic documentaries like BASEBALL and JAZZ and shorter ones like those on Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Abraham Lincoln. If one has seen much of his work, one is aware of two ongoing preoccupations: the history of United States and the role of race in that history. Therefore, a documentary on the boxer Jack Johnson falls very much in the stream of his previous work. Nonetheless, the choice of subject is a tad surprising; Jack Johnson is someone who is known, but not exactly a household name. Before this documentary, my knowledge of Johnson consisted of the fact that he was the first well known African American athlete, flourished a couple of decades before Joe Louis, and was the subject of a highly successful stage play starring James Earl Jones. I didn't even know if any film footage existed of his bouts. In short, unlike Burns's other documentaries, this was definitely going to be a total learning experience. The result was one of the very best, if not the very best, short documentary that Ken Burns has produced.
Amazingly, there is not merely a rich photographic record of Johnson's career, but an amazing amount of film footage. As a result, you can get a wonderful sense of what he was like as a boxer, perhaps the first boxer of whom that can be said. In fact, he might be the earliest major athlete of whom we have significant film footage. Upon reflection, the reason for this is clear. Cameras were not truly portable in 1908-13 and really could only be used from fixed positions. This meant that filming baseball or horse racing, the other two major sports at the time, was close to impossible. But boxing utilized a small area that could easily be filmed. I was fascinated to learn that many of the major boxing matches were filmed for distribution to movie theaters, meaning that well before performers such as Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin became popular, people were going to movie houses to watch boxing. The film and photos reveals a remarkably quick and agile and skilled boxer, a man who looks huge and a bit bulky when clothed-and his obsession with clothes is blatant from early in the documentary to the end, obviously one of the best dressed athletes of all time-but astonishingly lean though muscled when in his boxing gear. The film reveals a boxer who favors a defensive posture, weight back, ready to counterattack, but not one who tends to go at his opponent. With his speed and agility, he will clearly remind anyone of Muhammad Ali, another boxer whose style emphasized defense more than offense. But the racism of Johnson's time refused to make a virtue of his style, describing him as "shifty" instead of skilled, even though his style was exactly that of Gentleman Jim Corbett. The photos of Johnson are especially impressive, showing an astonishing physique. His upper back and shoulders are almost inconceivable for an athlete in an age in which weight lifting played no major role in physical fitness. In watching Johnson, he clearly seems an athlete decades ahead of his peers. One wonders how baseball players of the teens and twenties fare in an age that has pitches like the slider and a battery of relief pitchers, but one can easily imagine Johnson doing well even today. His skills as a boxer are obvious in all the footage that is shown of him.
Although little mention of Muhammad Ali is made in the documentary until the very end, it is almost impossible to watch this film without comparing him constantly to Ali. Though he facially lacked Ali's very handsome looks, his boxing style, his brash insistence on being his own man, and some of the ordeals he goes through bear a striking resemblance to Ali's career. Near the end the film talks of how Ali self-identified with Johnson after his being stripped of his title after refusing to serve in the military. The big difference between the two is the fact that Johnson was very much the party animal, while Ali has always been a much more serious person.
The film is split into two parts, the first half dealing with the rise of Johnson and culminating in his defense of his heavyweight crown against Jim Jeffries, former heavyweight champ and the major "Great White Hope," whom whites hoped would recover the crown for their race. The second half deals with Johnson's "Fall," and centers primarily around efforts to convict him for his sexual relations with white women using the Mann Act. Though one can't respect Johnson's way of relating to women (he was abusive to women and either incapable or uninterested in fidelity), the way the government proceeded against him based primarily on his race is, of course, utterly loathsome. The nadir is his losing to giant Kansas Jess Willard, who beat Johnson in 1915 in Cuba in the 26th round of their match (though it should be pointed out that under today's rules Johnson would have been the clear winner, out boxing Willard through nearly the whole fight until tiring in the 105 degree heat at the end). Johnson's story ends less sadly than one might have anticipated, despite spending a year in prison for his Mann Act violation nonetheless managing to have enough money to maintain his lifestyle until dying at age 68 in a car crash.
The documentary has all the professionalism that one has come to associate with Ken Burns's films and has the additional virtue of a remarkable score by Wynton Marsalis, who featured so prominently in his JAZZ series. Many of the commentators were familiar from previous documentaries, including Stanley Crouch, Gerald Early, and George Plimpton, while Keith David, who did the narration for JAZZ was narrator here as well.
I strongly recommend this documentary. It is Burns's at his best on a topic that will interest just about anyone and not merely boxing fans. It deals with a major American figure who deserves to be better known. In debates about the greatest boxers who ever lived, Johnson is often mentioned for his superb defensive skills, but hopefully after this fine effort he will be remembered as a truly great all around boxer and perhaps even the very best.
On a personal note, I live only about six blocks south of Graceland Cemetery, which I have for some reason never bothered to visit, despite being the resting place of many famous Americans. But seeing that Johnson is also buried there just might be enough for me to go seek out his resting place and pay my respects.
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