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The "appointment with repentance" interrupted, thus Faust in a lustrous gospel-folklore retelling. Vincente Minnelli unveils his slinky fluidity early with an unbroken take and the camera zigzagging across a congregation singing "Li'l Black Sheep" as news of the sinner sitting in the back pew travel from parishioner to parishioner. The little gambler (Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) goes to church to overcome his addiction to "calamity cubes" but disappears when it's time for confession, his wife (Ethel Waters) finds him at the Paradise Club with a bullet in his belly: "I got into a little trouble again, honey." The ensuing delirium visualizes a soul suspended between stools, Lucifer Junior (Rex Ingram) and the celestial General (Kenneth Spencer) grant him a few more months on Earth to test his virtue. Heaven counts on Waters, who beats her husband's dice-throwing cronies at their own game and chases them away with a broom. ("Sometimes when you fight the Devil, you got to jab him with his own pitchfork.") But Hades has Louis Armstrong among the "Idea Department" imps, plus Lena Horne with bare midriff and magnolia-blossom hat, a serious argument for straying from the good path. The Minnelli style is already formed in the superb nightclub sequence: The camera follows a strutting couple through the saloon doors, cranes up to take the crowd on the dance floor, then down to find Duke Ellington at the piano. (A jitterbugging duo storms in, and the orgy explodes.) Waters shimmers with "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" and "Taking a Chance on Love," Anderson with "Consequences," Horne with "Honey in the Honeycomb." The magnificent "Shine" belongs to John W. "Bubbles" Sublett, he flies like Astaire. The Wizard of Oz twister has a cameo as the Lord smites the jive temple, Heaven is a pearly stairwell revisited by Powell and Pressburger. "Long climb, ain't it?" With Butterfly McQueen, Oscar Polk, Mantan Moreland, Willie Best, Ernest Whitman and Bill Bailey. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |