Uncle Tom's Cabin

Plot synopsis:
=== Eliza escapes with her son, Tom sold "down the river" ===
The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza—to a slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor.
When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving a note of apology to her mistress.
Tom is sold and placed on a riverboat which sets sail down the Mississippi River. While on board, Tom meets and befriends a young white girl named Eva. Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys Tom from the slave trader and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share.
=== Eliza's family hunted, Tom's life with St. Clare ===
During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada. However, they are tracked by a slave hunter named Tom Loker. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to shoot him in the side. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment.
Back in New Orleans, St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her views on blacks are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave, and asks Ophelia to educate her.
After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven, which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, with Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom.
=== Tom sold to Simon Legree ===
Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, however, he dies after being stabbed outside of a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Legree (a transplanted northerner) takes Tom and Emmeline (whom Legree purchased at the same time) to rural Louisiana, where they meet Legree's other slaves.
Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, however, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another of Legree's slaves. Cassy was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold; unable to endure the pain of seeing another child sold, she killed her third child.
At this point Tom Loker returns to the story. Loker has changed as the result of being healed by the Quakers. George, Eliza, and Harry have also obtained their freedom after crossing into Canada. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God is tested by the hardships of the plantation. However, he has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death. He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by the character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. Very shortly before Tom's death, George Shelby (Arthur Shelby's son) arrives to buy Tom's freedom but finds he is too late.
=== Final section ===
On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris's sister and accompany her to Canada. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm and frees all his slaves. George tells them to remember Tom's sacrifice and his belief in the true meaning of Christianity.

Tags: cruelty

Review:
This is perhaps the best film adaption of the classic Harriet Beecher Stowe novel.
An early appearance of Virginia Grey as Little Eva, Harry Pollard's mastery of filmmaking, and Margarita Fischer's beauty and talent all combine to make film preservation an important cause..
While this movie certainly suffers from the prevailing prejudices of the times it still carries great emotional weight and manages to humanize slaves and rightfully demonize the institution of slavery itself.
Turkish actor Arthur Edmund Carewe is a little more believable as a light skinned black person than is Marguerite Fischer in her role as Eliza but Fischer's performance is pretty effective.
Lowe, the only actual African-American actor in one of the lead roles is outstanding as Uncle Tom. What is even more outstanding is the dignity and lack of minstrelsy in the way he is allowed to play him.
Not at all typical of even the few films with sympathies toward the plight of black Americans and slaves from the start of American cinema to the late 1950's, this treatment and characterization of Uncle Tom goes a long way toward negating the ridiculous portrayal of the slaves of the kindly Shelby's as happy and content, even thankful (Tom and his wife proclaim how the Lord has blessed them with their life on the plantation)to be in bondage.
Certainly some slave owners were otherwise decent people who were also victims of the pseudo-science that proclaimed blacks as simple naive and in need of white guidance at one end of the philosophical spectrum and as sub-human and even evil at the other.
Even though the characters are both "black" the actress playing Cassie was not and the hand holding with and affectionate nursing of Lowe's Uncle Tom was the kind of action that would normally raise howls of protest from certain audiences.
One of the first multi-million dollar productions, this film is not quite faithful to the book but still catches the viewer up in the plight of George and Eliza in particular and manages to indict the evil institution of slavery despite its concession to certain "sensibilities".
A scene showing Uncle Tom rescuing Eva from the river was cut-probably so as not to give a black character too much heroic prominence but Eliza's escape over the ice floes is as realistic (even though it was done, or rather re-done on a studio backlot after having some footage shot on location originally) as anything of the times or even later.
Cinematically and dramatically the film more than justifies its huge budget and if a modern viewer can stomach some of the cliché portrayal of blacks and slaves and the cartoon-ish portrayal of some of the white characters they might find themselves understanding why Abraham Lincoln upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe was supposed to have remarked "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" Only a true Simon Legree could look at even this stylized portrayal of slavery and still support the "peculiar institution".Added December 12 2005:Wanted to mention to Joseph Ulibas that while he is right that this film marks an innovative use of a racially mixed cast thecharacters of the slaves George, Eliza and Topsy were all played by white actors..
Based on the 1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, this silent film is a grand melodrama with all the trimmings and includes some of the most famous characters and scenes in American literature.
Oddly there has never been an American talkie version of this classic.Released by Universal with a "no-star" cast, the film captures most of the highlights from the novel, including Eliza's flight across the frozen river pursued by bloodhounds (very well done), the death of Little Eva, and the villainous Simon Legree.
Lowe as Uncle Tom), most of the other parts are also played by Black actors (but I suspect a few were whites in black face).Margarita Fisher (in her final film) stars as Eliza, 10-year-old Virginia Grey in her film debut plays Little Eva, George Siegmann is a terrific Simon, Lucien Littlefield is the lawyer, Aileen Manning is Aunt Ophelia, Mona Ray is Topsy, and Eulalie Jensen is wonderful as Cassy.
A Family Man. In these days Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel of Uncle Tom's Cabin is known more by historians as a contributing cause of the Civil War than as an actual literary work.
So sadly did the king, but that's another story.What you're seeing in this 1927 version is not Harriet Beecher Stowe's story, it couldn't be because there are references in the film to the Dred Scott decision, the firing on Fort Sumter and the Emancipation Proclamation all in the future because her story was published in 1852.What slaves, free blacks, and sympathetic northerners like the Quaker family you see who rescue Eliza and her baby are afraid of the new strict fugitive slave law.
Even the idea that black people were to be thought of as equal was radical in too many eyes back in the day.Stowe used a lot of what would later be labeled stereotypes, most importantly the phrase 'Uncle Tom'.
The criticism has certain validity, but I think for the wrong reasons.As seen her old Uncle Tom is the elder head of the plantation blacks on a Kentucky estate who the master even trusts to go to free state Ohio on business for him.
No one can believe that Uncle Tom actually returns, the criticism is that his pride is so broken he accepts what the slave owners give him.Tom returns, not because he accepts, but because in that cabin are his wife and children, even in slavery he's a family man.
Families being destroyed is the cardinal sin for Stowe.Except for young Virginia Grey playing little Eliza the innocent who hasn't learned to regard certain people as beneath treating as human, most people today won't know the cast members.
Harry Pollard is my great uncle, and Margarita Fisher is my great aunt,I loved the movie and i couldnt belive that they had this on video.I remember as a kid all the stories and pictures about my aunt and uncle that my grandmother Katherine Havens would tell me and to see all this on the internet just blew me away.
Arthur Edmund Carewe (an actor whom IMDb fascinatingly claims is of Native American descent- Chickasaw- and yet is said to have been born in Tebiziond Turkey?) is quite good as George Harris the light skinned husband of Eliza and father of Harry- although he barely appears in the film since much of George's story has been edited out.
This movie is the origin of the stereotypical "Uncle Tom" not Stowe's novel.
The faith connection between Tom and Eva is completely absent from the movie, yet one cannot appreciate the true nobility of their characters without seeing this bond between them brought about by a shared love of the world beyond.
This filmed version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is pretty good despite an embarrassing stereotype.
When I discovered that a filmed version of the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was available at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, I had to check it out.
Now while there were plenty of exciting scenes of attempted escapes-like Eliza (Margarita Fischer) on ice floes in the dark with her son on her arms or a later sequence of her trying to recover that son as she runs after a horse wagon-and some tense scenes with the bullying Simon Legree (George Siegmann) when he gets his comeuppance, there were also some noticeably missing ones that made me wonder why some things happened the way they did.
Lowe with dignity, the stereotyped pickaninny Topsy is obviously played by a white female named Mona Ray with all the embarrassing histrionics, including the eye bugging and-in deleted DVD extras-her referring herself as the N-word and trying to be white by powdering her face.
That character and performance is the only really awful thing about this movie which, despite the many cuts, is mostly a compellingly filmed version of a famous novel, even with the setting changed to when the Civil War was going on.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927) was a very big budgeted silent film production that was one of the first Hollywood movies to use an actual cast of black and white actors working together.
This is the first movie or one of the first to cast black people as slaves and they are well cast for the most part especially considering that these actors didn't have resumes to show if they had the goods to act in a feature film.
Lowe's performance as Uncle Tom creates a large amount of charisma because it is made clear that he is a nice man who loves anyone who shows him kindness.
It is also a great way to know the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin if you don't like reading books.
The movie makes some significant changes to the story, notably shifting the period to the beginning of the Civil War (allowing the "Yankee" Army to free the slaves), eliminating the shootout between George and pursuing slave-catchers (perhaps the image of an escaped slave shooting at white men was considered too incendiary for the times), and adding a more 'Hollywood-style' ending (a last minute heroic rescue and the villain's righteous comeuppance).
The film also combines the characters Eliza and Emmeline and eliminates most of the story that takes place amongst the Quakers in Ohio (all of whom, despite living in a 'free state', were breaking the law by helping the runaways - again perhaps to spare the audience's feelings).
Like the movie, the novel includes many good, honorable, Christian slave-owners, but the book clearly distinguishes between 'being good' and 'doing good'.
While Stowe's book as some humorous moments (e.g. spitting tobacco juice, Ophelia's battle with her trunk), the movie movies pushes for laughs through stereotypes that parody both blacks (Topsy, the black children devouring a watermelon, slaves mugging and energetically dancing to 'Turkey in the Straw') and whites (lawyer Marks).
The film is noted for having most of the significant black characters played whites in blackface with the exception of Tom himself, who was played by African American actor James B.
The main characters Eliza and George are not even in blackface and to modern viewers, the idea that the obviously white actors are runaway black slaves may seem ridiculous.
Lowe is good as Tom but needs to be appreciated in the context of the stagy, theatrical acting style that characterized most silent films.
The movie is worth watching for fans of the book, social and cultural historians, and silent-film aficionados.
There is the content of Stowe's novel transcribed to film of course, depicting the cruelty of slavery, and the separation of families.
Lee quote on the evil of slavery, which is more than a little ironic.White actors playing all of the African-American characters, except Uncle Tom (James B.
It is just a shameful, shameful performance.By shifting the movie forward in time, the Union troops eventually arrive to 'save the day', as if all of the problems for African-Americans were solved in that moment.On the other hand, there are many positives to the film:
As in the book, the scene with Eliza (Margarita Fischer) running away with her son in her arms, across the ice floes of a river, is compelling, and really stands out.
Lowe turns in a good performance, portraying dignity, faith, and stoicism.The scenes which have the whipped turning the tables and doing some whipping themselves are a little cathartic.It's a small moment, but in the scene on the riverboat when Eva (Virginia Grey) is handing out treats to the slaves in an act of kindness, one African-American girl (actually played by an African-American) turns away, with such a look of pain and forlornness in her eyes.
The very brief scene where the black women discuss with irony the horrific "white" wedding of George and Eliza is one of the most telling moments in the film.
One reviewer notices the presence of George Siegmann from Birth of a Nation (he was however an enormously prolific actor) but fails to spot Griffith's fellow Kentuckian, the wonderful Madame Sul-Te-Wan who provides for my money some of the most electrifying seconds of black defiance in that wretched Griffith film.The really shocking thing about this million-dollar extravaganza is how regressive it is in its racial politics by comparison with the 1914 version.
In this film the whole story has been dissolved into a kind of "Southern" western with all the typical nostalgia for the elegant, aristocratic South in the good old days of slavery (much as one will find again in Gone With the Wind).So, whereas the 1914 film begins by emphasising the ghastliness of slave-owning and the imperative for most African Americans to escape somehow to liberty (Shelby being quite clearly shown as an EXCEPTIONAL slave-owner), here the exact opposite is done with the Shelbies' "gentle rule of the slaves" being specifically misrepresented - one can hardly believe one's eyes - as "typical of the South".
Except for a bad egg or two, slavery was a sheer pleasure, where black folk could play music, dance and eat water0-melons to their hearts' content.I am loath to criticise any black actor but Lowe is every inch an "Uncle Tom".
We are on the way here to that later classic of disguised racism - To Kill a Mocking Bird - where it is not the plight of the negro that is to be pitied but that of the long-suffering "white" liberal.There are of course rather a lot of bad eggs in the story (the film can hardly change that) but the conflation with the Civil War (nothing to do with the novel) allows the "Lincoln" card of unification to be played (again very Griffith) and all possible nastiness to be glazed over in a final apotheosis (the US cavalry as the heavenly host) where Tom's brutal murder is rather a secondary event and all focus is on the reunited family, a very white grandmother conveniently added (another change from the book) so that the film can come as near as dammit to suggesting that they are not really blacks at all....It is a beautiful film (in terms of its production) but the beauty cannot make up for the racist beast that lurks throughout this film.....
Also there are white actors in (obvious) black face and the two leads (Eliza and George) are white also.
Still, this is a great movie.Some of the character names (Uncle Tom, Little Eva, Simon Legree, Sambo) have become part of our language in good and bad ways.
The movie also is well-acted (especially by Margarita Fischer as Eliza) and very moving at times (even though it does overdo it a bit with little Eva).
Characters like Topsy and Eva the little white girl and black slave girl are never fully integrated in to the whole and I understand that some of Eva's scenes have been cleaned up for modern eyes.
In "Uncle Tom's Cabin", he's the villain again, but as the slave trader and owner Simon Legree.
This adaptation reworks Stowe's novel to focus less on Uncle Tom and more on Eliza, who, surely not coincidentally, is played by the director's wife.
(Also, a girl plays, for no apparent reason, Eliza's child, who in the story is a boy.)An African American plays Uncle Tom, which was also the case in the 1914 film.
The two deleted scenes included on the Kino DVD feature Topsy and are more racist than anything in the rest of the picture.As aforementioned, however, I did find the narrative engaging, as well as somewhat emotionally involving, and the film retains enough of Stowe's anti-slavery standpoint to be politically pleasing.
The sequence in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" isn't as good as the ones in those two films, but it's impressive, nonetheless.
Okay, it's true that people watching this well-intentioned movie today will very likely be offended by some of the over-the-top imagery of happy slaves singing and dancing and enjoying their bondage during the first portion of the film.
This "happy slave" myth is advanced in the film--most likely to assuage the guilt of White America concerning the evil of slavery.
Plus, as the movie was made after the Civil War while the book was made in the 1850s (before the war), they were able to give it a more satisfying conclusion--leaving the audience with an uplifting segment where the Union Army frees the slaves of Simon Legree's hellish plantation.The movie gets very high marks for some of the camera-work--especially the rousing scene where Liza crosses the ice flow with her young son.
Acting is generally good--particularly by Mr. Lowe as Uncle Tom, though there were quite a few silly and overacted scenes here and there.
The emphasis in the film is more on "Eliza", a very light complexioned slave (probably an octoroon), than on "Uncle Tom", who is almost a background lay figure.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927)*** (out of 4) Universal dropped $2 million on this adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, which had been one of the best selling books other than the Bible.
The film tells the story of slaves Eliza (Margarita Fischer) and George (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who, after being married, get sold off and spend the rest of the film trying to locate their kid.
This movie has its heart in the right place but I'm sure many would watch this film and find it nearly as racist as something like THE BIRTH OF A NATION.
The roles of Eliza and George were light-skinned characters in the book and they're played by white people here.
That's somewhat to be expected as most black characters were played by whites in blackface but thankfully the director didn't do that here with Uncle Tom and many of the supporting characters.
This film was groundbreaking in the use of black actors and on a historic level, this keeps the movie entertaining throughout.
Lowe also gives the best performance in the film and delivers a character who will certainly touch the viewer in his strength.