|
"Jim Crowism on the diamond" serves the showbiz metaphor, a Motown production directed by a British novice is the reflexive venture. Tired of being exploited by avaricious Negro League suits, Bingo Long (Billy Dee Williams) of the Ebony Aces and sluggin' Leon (James Earl Jones) of the Elite Giants choose revolution ("a very democratic idea") and take their own lineup on the road. Barnstorming independents still have segregated stopovers to face, bleacherfuls of racists lie ahead yet shrewd Uncle Tomfoolery defuses friction. It's all fun and slapdash montages until the owners decide to "seize the means of production" back, pistol and razor and all. "The slave done run off, all right." Games as spectacle, spectacle as performance, performance as Black self-image during athletic apartheid, the war at home ca. 1939. The intransigent pride of the hitter who knows his Du Bois is contrasted with the neurotic effacement of the player (Richard Pryor) who dons Cuban pomade and Spanish dictionary and fringed buckskin and afro-mohawks. Between them is the suavity of the team leader, whose smile must disarm the audience while sidestepping minstrelsy degradation. Not the wrath of Aldrich's sports allegories (The Longest Yard, All the Marbles) but the joshing antics and barrelhouse tempo of John Badham's direction, complete with elegiac coziness after the auspicious rookie (Stan Shaw) is snatched by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Flavorsome details (the satirical apparatus of gorilla suit and oversized mitt, the capitalists' funeral home conference, Pryor's sidelong glance at the tawny Fourth of July baton-twirler) hint at the struggle, though the stadium remains mainly an arena for safe box-office amusements. With Ted Ross, Otis Day, Jophery C. Brown, Tony Burton, and Mabel King.
--- Fernando F. Croce |