The new series Paul Robeson: The Centennial Collection includes three new-to-video releases: Song of Freedom (1936), Big Fella (1937) and Jericho (1937). These films have been digitally remastered, even one from a Library of Congress 35mm nitrate print (Big Fella). The fourth in the box set is Robeson's 1924 film debut - a palpably pre-Code indie by Oscar Micheaux about an escaped convict posing as a preacher - Body and Soul. What followed shows a range of styles and tones. J. Elder Willis' Song of Freedom marked the first time Robeson got final cut. It serves as a musical precursor to Roots. Willis' Big Fella is an adventure film about a dockworker gone undercover, with such musical highlights as, "You Didn't Ought to Do Such Things." Jericho (AKA Dark Sands) was a WWI drama shot on location in Northern Africa, complete with a white-guy sidekick played by John Laurie. Robeson's character not only clears his name after a military mishap, he becomes a sheik while in exile! As Frances Grandy Taylor of the Hartford Courant-Detroit News quoted Robeson's son, who is reportedly working on a public TV documentary on his father: "For so many years, he was wiped from the public discourse. This centennial is finally giving people a glimpse of who he really was."
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