Super Fly

A CURRENT SPATE of films starring, written and directed by blacks is filling urban movie houses and treating ethnic audiences to fantasy visions previously only colored white. Machismo, even in its white variety, is a hideous subject for glorification. But the black supermen in these movies roister about the contemporary cityscape like hyper Sam Spades without the Hammett moral sense. Sweetback or Shaft are totally ruthless people, oppressed by whites but equally disgusted by the lack of effectiveness of black community and cultural leaders. They are agents who wish to be totally free, and are concerned solely with their personal vendettas against the rest of the world. Until Super Fly, the hardened Chester Himes cops of Cotton Comes to Harlem and Come Back Charleston Blue were the only colorful heros who also possessed social conscience and civic sense (though both efforts were sabotaged by, respectively, clumsy and cutesy direction).

Now Super Fly has come, and it looks like there's a whole new breed of pop cult cat on our hands. Like those other fellows, cocaine pusher Priest is violent and sexually ravenous, but his violence is only what's necessary and his women get more than good service--love, and responsible entry into the man's most private worldly concerns.

Of which there are plenty. Super Fly wants to land; tired of junk peddling, he hopes to make enough cash that he can escape from the double-cross world of crime to one where the options are more even and more open even for a black man (if he already has his money.) When Priest finds out that he can't escape at all--the Man won't let such a good seller go, and the Man happens to be also the Deputy Police Commissioner-Priest must use his wits and restrain his brawn, come out with a plan that can trap even the highest head on the dope trade totem pole sans direct violence. He wins because of his intelligence, and because he is right--of all the blacks who were sucked into illicit trade, at least one man has to break the chain if it is ever to be stopped.

Though the film is pure melodrama, obviously an attempt to create a new popular black hero and not to rip apart Harlem or the cocaine trade directly, one scene is so incisively written and acted with such conviction that it almost transcends its context to make a sad and angry statement on the black condition. Priest needs thirty keys of dope, an unprecedented figure for a pusher, in order to enable him to act on his first plan--simply to sell enough and get out. With his more cynical partner Eddie, Priest goes to the old friend who got him started on the trade and is now himself retired, running a swank Harlem night spot. Scatter is not flustered by Eddie's strong-arm tactics, nor after minutes of consideration is he at all enamored of the idea, which places more risks on his current security than he would like to take. Then Fly turns on the old man, berates him for taking the fatherly responsibility of introducing him to a trade (no matter if illicit), without letting him know of the alternative, no matter how tentative, and then not supporting him when he makes a mature choice. This touches a sore that Scatter, alone, without wife or family, has long held within him. He finally gives in--only to be kicked off by his own boss with an overdose of coke.

GORDON PARKS JR. has directed from a Philip Henty script. Parks, who did some special photography for Burn and The Godfather, and who is the son of the Life photographer and creator of Shaft, far surpasses his father in filmmaking vigor in this, his first feature. It's all pretty crude, but he keeps things rolling, manages to cool off more obvious hot elements while keeping the cold liquid, and with crisp photography brings us closer into Harlem's high and low life than any of the bigger-budgeted current black flicks. (Not to mention that the effect he gets in a screw in a bubblebath is one of the more erotic things you'll soon see).

The acting is erratic. Ron O'Neal is a handsome man with a commanding presence, but his moments of indecision are more blank than tortured. Julius W. Harris as Scatter acts earnest in his easy part. But Carl Lee, as Eddie, earns unqualified approval. With a lean and scowling face and a voice which grates with nurtured agony, his measured walk and languid vocals convince us immediately. When he says that the cocaine trade was the only route open to a bright young black like him, we believe it.

So, all in all, Super Fly comes through as a pretty slick package. Backed by vibrant Curtis Mayfield songs about pusher men, it may just present its audience with a dream image; but this image is healthier than the others that are being pushed around.

(An interview with Ron O'Neal will appear in the next Crimson.)