USA,
1990, 102 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Charles Burnett
- prod
-
Caldecott Chubbq, Thomas S. Byrnes, Darin Scott
- scr
-
Charles Burnett
- cam
-
Walt Lloyd
- editor
-
Nancy Richardson
- cast
-
Danny Glover, Mary Alice, Richard Brooks, Paul Butler, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Vonetta McGee
-
COMMENTS
Danny Glover in person to receive the 1993 Piper-Heidsieck award.
In To Sleep With Anger, Danny Glover got his first chance onscreen to divulge the depths of his mystery, soulfulness and glee. As a Deep South con man who finagles himself into a South-Central Los Angeles family, Glover helped director Charles Burnett bring the poetry and mysticism of rural black tradition into the fragmented contemporary city. And he made it all real and seductive. Glover's character is named Harry Mention. In Zora Neale Hurston's collections of black folklore, she described Daddy Mention—a perennial jailbird who was also a "wonder-working gentlemen." In To Sleep With Anger, Glover creates a protean figure who resembles Daddy Mention and other archetypes from Hurston's books, including the Devil himself; the hoodoo wizard Uncle Monday; and wily Jack, who's as speedy as a jackrabbit—"the (transplanted) trickster hero of West Africa." The actor gets to epitomize the nearly supernatural "adaptability" the black man had to master in order to survive in America. Most of all, Harry Mention is a "wonder-working gentleman." He assumes chivalric tones even when asking permission to use the bathroom. He makes his hosts recall an earlier time, when, as the script puts it, Blacks had to "know their place" and find some grace and redemption in it.
—Michael Sragow
FACTOID #125
According to the November 29, 1959 San Diego Union, The Village on the River was the first Dutch feature ever shown in the U.S. (at the Third San Francisco International Film Festival).
