Synopsis
Earliest known example of African American intimacy on screen.
Something Good — Negro Kiss
1898 Directed by William Nicholas Selig
Cast
Director
Genre
Popular reviews
More-
The virgin The Kiss (1896)
- Too much build-up, ultimately anticlimactic
- Awkward and unrealistic positioning of faces
- Man is clearly forcing kiss on woman
- Disgusting moustache getting in the way of everythingv.s.
The chad Something Good - Negro Kiss (1898)
- Gets straight to it, many kisses are exchanged
- Passionate and naturalistic
- Both parties are participating enthusiastically
- Literally calls itself "something good" in the title, boss move -
Y’all see that tweet with this and the If Beale Street Could Talk score edited over it? Cry...I have to cry.
-
-
How good can a half-minute-long document of two people kissing be? This good. Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown were part of a stage troupe who specialised in the cakewalk, a prototype of the charleston which began among slaves as a way of mocking the haughtiness and affectations of their masters. By the 1890s, it had become so stylised and eccentric that it was enjoyed by white audiences who were, presumably, unaware of its origins. The cakewalk is so joyous that even today it lacks the quality of taboo or horror that accompanies most relics of the minstrel show; when Donald Glover threw a few steps into his video for 'This Is America', it was received as an Easter egg for…
-
-
So enthusiastic and full of life, despite the distance in time and space, it feels....remarkably voyeuristic despite the fact I'm watching a snapshot of the 19th century from the 21st. And they're so enthusiastic and playful and clearly into each other, that, even if this wasn't historically significant, one could learn a thing or two from watching it on repeat.
-
When the Library of Congress released their list of twenty-five films to be included in the National Film Registry there were many familiar titles and then there was this thirty-second film from 1898. If you're familiar with movies from this era or if you're familiar with the race movies that would gain popularity during the 1920s then you'll realize that this here is something special.
The film has a black man and woman kissing, doing a dance and just smiling and having a good time.
Once again, if you're familiar with the movies from this era then you know about THE KISS as well as its remake as well as other films that ripped it off. Of course, the biggest…
-
Who knew that the sweetest movie kiss ever was filmed 120 years ago?
This is what true love looks like.
-
It is aw-shucks happy and affectionate and lovable, it really is.
But it wouldn't be me writing if I didn't point out that the freedom to take joy in each other is being relegated to the racial 'other,' behaving in ways that don't correspond to the hidebound and hincty primness of the Irwin/Rice Kiss or other contemporaneous (white) representations.
What if anything that means, y'all can fight over it.
-
A Year of Film History Challenge 2020
(watching a little bit of film history month by month, decade by decade)
--
Watched a very nice restoration on Vimeo. While the short does feel slightly staged in the same way portrait photography usually does, there's so much about this that doesn't feel that way, with so much energy, spontaneity, and personality coming across that it makes this couple (who belong to that first generation born after the U.S. Civil War) feel a whole lot less than 120 years removed from us. So great that films like this exist. -
This is the best film I've seen this decade. 120 year old impulse and they're still kissing.
For historical perspective, W.E.B. Du Bois was 10 years old when actress Gertie Brown was born (1878), which was 2 years before Marcus Garvey. Actor Saint Suttle was born in Kentucky 5 years after the War Between the States ended. Both Brown and Suttle were stage and vaudeville performers of the day. They kissed for William Nicholas Selig's camera 4 years before Langston Hughes drew a breath.
-
I first saw this more than a year or so ago and my review was never finished so, here I am again with a review.
I am a fan of the genuine energy in this film. I love the glimpse into the past it provides and yet, I also love how it puts on display just how universal and ‘now’ it feels.
If you need to feel good, and lord knows I did after these past few weeks, give this one a quick watch.