When Cicely Tyson died last month I realized how little of her work I’d actually seen. It’s not too surprising, she was mostly renowned for theatre which elicits little mainstream exposure, and TV performances in the 70s and 80s which are rare to find (at some point I will watch Roots). But Tyson does stand tall among African-American actresses, even in the limited experience I’ve had with her performances in her elder years, so I figured I ought to make the effort to at least see one of the parts that garnered her such acclaim: her sole Academy Award nomination for the 1972 film Sounder (a first in Academy history of two black actresses being nominated the same year -her and Diana Ross- who were also only the second and third black women to be nominated in that category ever).
In spite of her leading nomination though, Tyson isn’t really the main character of Sounder, based on a book by William H. Armstrong I understand has some popularity in American schools. It’s a movie about a black family in Louisiana during the Great Depression, and if anyone is the protagonist, it’s David (Kevin Hooks), the teenage son of Tyson’s Rebecca and Paul Winfield’s Nathan, from whose point of view the story is seemingly told.
The title doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the plot, unless the plot is drastically altered from the source material. Sounder is the family dog, a close companion to both Nathan and David and the subject of the films’ most distressing scene, whereby Sounder is shot at by white men taking Nathan away on the back of a car. It’s shocking, even if you see it coming, by just how swift it is and how vivid -it doesn’t cut away like other movies would, there’s visible blood and the dog looks genuinely hurt, obviously something that won’t sit well with some viewers. And the characters are traumatized as well, as Sounder slinks off presumably to die. He doesn’t though, which I think is why the film gets away with that scene. But even when he does come back, he doesn’t play much a role in the larger narrative except perhaps as a symbol for the situation of the Lee family. During Nathan’s incarceration, he is either injured, absent, or dejected, his excitability and spirits are dependent on all being right with the world. And for much of the movie that bears his name, it isn’t.
Martin Ritt was the director of Sounder, and his work which also includes Hud and Norma Rae, is known for its social consciousness. But one of the interesting things about this film is how comparatively subtle it is. This was after all still the era of In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, that first wave of movies to critically examine race and racism in the United States. But Sounder doesn’t openly declare itself as such, it doesn’t bemoan the injustice and oppression of the systems and individuals that keep the Lees in poverty or Nathan in jail on trumped up charges for something he’s probably not guilty of anyway. It relies on the audience to see that without the script’s help, so that it can hone in more emphatically on the subjective experience of this family in this time period and their actions to get by or be reunited again. Hell, a substantive part of the film is simply on David going on a long journey to visit his father at a prison camp he’s been moved to without the family being notified. It’s presented as just something he has to do to see his dad, which only makes it more frustrating for the audience.
In that vein of subtlety is Tysons’ performance throughout the movie. It’s not a terribly complex role, the family matriarch, but it is a quietly stirring one nonetheless. Rebecca commands full respect of the family whether or not Nathan is there, and in every scene demonstrates her fortitude and strength. Tyson plays her with the weariness of someone who has endured a harsh life but is determined to get through it as best she can for the sake of her family. But she’s also proactive, seeks contact with her husband however she can, and whatever routes there are available for justice. She has resolve and a great deal of conviction, and in the moments where she is allowed to issue forth a raw burst of emotion it comes across as that much more meaningful. The scene of Nathan being taken away and the one of him returning near the end are those moments for Tyson, and she is extraordinary and real in both grief and elation -our conduit to the films’ heart.
Winfield and Hooks also deserve recognition, as much as Tyson is more than enough of a reason to watch this movie. Each understand their part thoroughly and how they exist in this world. Winfield’s best moment comes when he can’t help but break down in prison in front of his son at the uncertainty of what will become of him -such a turn from the confident family breadwinner and stable authority in his childrens’ lives. Late in the film, he becomes the firmest advocate in Davids’ going to school because of his desperation for his children to attain the kind of life that takes them away from such easy targeting by the white powers that be. The most heartfelt scene of the film is the one where he explains this to David after the latters’ resistance to the idea of leaving his now weakened father to look after the farm himself. That very commitment in David, as counter-intuitive as it is to his better prospects and his fathers’ wishes for him, is the culmination of his journey of responsibility. His love for his father and dedication to family only increases with Nathans’ captivity, and it blossoms into one of the best father-son relationships I’ve seen, certainly in a black context (and is it a coincidence that the week I watched this movie I also saw Boyz n the Hood for the first time?).
David, like many kids in similar circumstances, is forced to grow up much too soon in the absence of a paternal presence, and Hooks plays well the ways it changes him in significant but not necessarily severe ways. The other interesting side of his story is of course his encounter with school, and the beginnings of intellectual enlightenment and greater cultural appreciation. In the all-black class of a model Miss Camille (Janet MacLachlan), which we feel directly the foreignness of, he is confronted with that chance of escape in an enticingly accessible way -and it’s also where the movie shows its’ hand in terms of its racial discussion. Miss Camille begins a process of undoing what whitewashed history and culture David has been exposed to, telling him the story of Crispus Attucks (the figure also referenced by Spike Lee in Da 5 Bloods), and giving him some literature by W.E.B. DuBois. For both David and the audience it’s a statement on the importance of teaching black history, a subject prioritized not much more in the early 1970s than it was in the 1930s. And it conveys how essential it is that David continue to go to that school.
Even with some depressing subject matter and that horrific scene with the dog, Sounder is a good family movie. It definitely has that feel of classic rural American family literature like Where the Red Fern Grows and To Kill a Mockingbird, but focused on the black experience rather than the white -something that was kind of revolutionary. It’s a decent coming-of-age narrative as well, with some good lessons to instill in its audience; and on a subtextual level is saying a lot about living under white supremacy, even without much in the way of noteworthy white representation. Winfield was nominated for an Oscar as well, as was Lonne Elder III for his screenplay, and even the film for Best Picture. Sounder may not have been able to push through the twin giants of The Godfather and Cabaret, but it was a big deal in 1972, and probably deserves a little more lasting recognition than it gets. Hopefully more people are driven to check it out now in the wake of Tysons’ passing. As an exceptionally American black coming-of-age family story on par with the likes of The Grapes of Wrath, it certainly fills a void that you might not have been fully aware of.
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