when we know the author of the original story be white and the film show perfectly well how the american society and after slavery and after up to the 1850s ban the black from all training into reading and write and from all speak their original language and even from all affiliation to any religion and rush head first into over christianize the black with no cautious slow down and with all calculate speed up they could master after the secession war and both south and north and though for different reason . the objective be to cast the black into the mold of the unexplainable will of god and the necessity to suffer in this world to be save in the next one . the interest of this film can not be find in the ethic of the story . maybe only at this level in the exploration of the arcane sophistication of the alienation and impose onto the black . but the real interest be the large presence of negro spiritual in the film and one of the very first film entirely center on black music and though in 1936 we must not forget we be after and within the triumph of the radio that enable black music and jazz to find a wide audience and to embed it existence and force into the wide black and white audience it have ever have and just a it enable f. d. roosevelt to dominate the political arena for twelve year or so . yet the film be tremendously deficient . the desire to have only black actor in the film lock up the black in a color ghetto . it appear a pure segregation against the white . it do not help u much understand the great musical revolution the black bring to the american continent . they live their music and their religion and their everyday life in the total absence of white except in one scene where the white be ku klux klan member lynch a whole bunch of black for no other apparent reason than the excitement of the hunt . at time the biblical story tell to u be so naive and simple mind that we can wonder whether we be talk to people provide with a brain . the music itself be very average . luckily this exclusively black cinema have not be further beyond the few film the late 1920s and the 1930s produce . they be lead to a complete dead end a for understand or simply reflect the real situation in which the black be live and which they may want to change . what more the reduction of the white to kkk member be definitely a racist caricature . dr jacques coulardeau and university paris dauphine and university paris 1 pantheon sorbonne and university versailles saint quentin en yvelines .