The Long Walk Home

The Long Walk Home

Introduction

This film is produced by Howard Koch, Jr. and Dave Bell: directed by Richard Pearce: screenplay by John Cork; cinematography by Roger Deakins: edited by Bill Yahraus; production design by Blake Russell: music by George Fenton; starring Sissy Spacek. Whoopi Goldberg. Dwight Schultz. Ving Rhames. Erika Alexander, Richard Habersham and Lexi Faith Randall. Color. 97 minutes. A Miramax Films release.

The opening long shot of The Long Walk Home comprises a stark, striking metaphor. It is a negative still of a street in Montgomery, Alabama. Slowly it reverses to gray, then people appear, action begins. and color seeps in. In the next scene. Odessa Cotter and other blacks get on the front of the bus. drop their coins into the till and exit, only to reenter through the rear door. Like the negative image, human values were inverted in the South of 1955. suffused with the harsh tones of segregation. The Montgomery bus boycott began the reversal of this skewed condition. Over 50,000 boycotted to integrate public transportation. After a year-long struggle, the Southern power structure was forced to give into the demands of blacks, because of the postwar economic boom, had begun to expect more of the American Dream. The Supreme Court intervened. The boycotters won, and a year later, the 1957 Civil Rights Act passed. But more remarkable than these official acts was the unlikely alliance of a handful of middle class whites with working class blacks.

Discussion

Odessa works as a maid for the Thompsons, a well-to-do family whose provider, Norman, works as a city developer. The film establishes the chain of command early, as Miriam Thompson mechanically issues orders to Odessa while Norman tells Miriam his daily expectations of her. At first a typical sheltered wife, she is soon outraged when a policeman, after insulting Odessa, expels her and Miriam's child. Mary Katherine, from a whites-only park, After indignantly calling the police chief (a friend of the family), Miriam engineers an immediate apology. When the officer arrives,he apologizes to Odessa while addressing Miriam. a detail not missed by Franklin. Odessa's savvy husband, when he hears about it. At a family party, spunky Miriam justifies her action to Tucker, her bigoted good-old-boy brother-in-law: "I'll not have my judgment impugned by some wet behind the ears patrolman, or by you!" Tucker initially finds this assertiveness charming ("She's a hellcat!"), but later will physically attack her for it.

Tucker's distasteful racism is shocking in the staid, middle class milieu, but fits snugly into director Richard Pearce's deft evocation of the 1950s South. It is a time when whites don't argue for or against the boycott, but about how best to handle obstreperous maids who observe it. They also band together in thinly-veiled white power groups called "Citizen's Councils." thinking their methods less crude than those of the Klan. When Miriam hears that Norman is attending a council meeting with Tucker, she ways. "I thought you were going to a business ...