Film Comment: The Green Pastures

     The Green Pastures (1936) is a highly controversial film which is often accused of being racist and demeaning to blacks.   (I believe it is nothing of the sort.)  Several countries banned it upon its release and many theaters in the United States refused to show it, for widely varying reasons.  Modern conservative Christians may be bothered by the film's seemingly Dynamic Monarchist Christology.  (I believe that is reading the film too literally.)  

     The premise of the film is that God ("de Lawd," portrayed by the wonderful Rex Ingram) and his angels are all uneducated Southern rural black people, as is everyone else on Earth after de Lawd creates it.  The biblical stories illustrated in the film are the Creation, Noah's Ark, the choosing of Israel as God's Special people,  and Moses leading his people from bondage.  The New Testament is avoided altogether until the final smile by the unchangeable and omnipotent Lawd when he decides how he's going to set everything straight without violating his own nature.

     The big name actors in the film (Rex Ingram, Oscar polk, George Reed, Eddie Anderson, Abraham Gleaves, Myrtle Anderson, and Frank Wilson) seem to have taken this film very seriously.  The story is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, written by a white man, and the all-black film was made with an all-white crew.

     Somehow this film transcends its origins.   The society which made it was flawed, not the message.  God is in total control of the universe, His angels are His faithful servants, God is graceful and merciful and loves and is loved by His children, and He values each one of us as if we were the only one.