4 LITTLE GIRLS
A Film Review by James Berardinelli
RATING (0 TO 10): 8.0 Alternative Scale: ***1/2 out of ****
United States, 1997 U.S. Release Date: 9/12/97 (limited) Running Length: 1:42 MPAA Classification: No MPAA Rating (Violence, mature themes) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Featuring Maxine and Christopher McNair, Alpha Robertson, Walter Cronkite, George Wallace, Ossie Davis, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, Bill Cosby, Reggie White, and others Director: Spike Lee Producers: Spike Lee and Sam Pollard Cinematography: Ellen Kuras Music: Terrence Blanchard U.S. Distributor: HBO and 40 Acres and a Mule
Basically, there are two types of documentaries: those set in the present or the near-past that feature numerous video images to support their thesis, and those based in a time that's decades or centuries ago, for which only paintings or still photos remain. 4 LITTLE GIRLS, feature director Spike Lee's first foray into the documentary realm, is in the time period of the former, but uses the techniques of the latter. Although the central event of the film -- the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama where four little girls were killed -- took place on September 15, 1963, the only surviving records of the victims exist as a series of black-and-white photographs.
It is Lee's job as a film maker to imbue these images with life, and that's a task he easily accomplishes. This is probably the best conventional documentary since ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED. By calling upon the recollections of friends and family members, Lee fleshes out the girls' photos, turning them into more than just the smiling faces of civil rights martyrs, and thus lending greater weight to the eventual account of what happened on that sad day in the heart of the segregated South.
4 LITTLE GIRLS begins on the morning of September 15, 1963, with the atrocity that brutally killed 11-year old Denise McNair, 14-year old Carole Robertson, 14-year old Cynthia Wesley, and 14-year old Addie Mae Collins. In the absence of live footage to display the event, Lee must rely upon photographs taken in the aftermath. Intercut with them are pictures of the girls superimposed upon images of their tombstones. Through it all, we can hear the voice of Joan Baez singing "Birmingham Sunday", a song that recounts the tragedy.
During the ninety minutes that follow the stirring opening, Lee takes pains not only to detail the political climate in which this occurred, but, more importantly, to give us a sense of who the girls were and what their loss meant to the community. The words of Rev. Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Rev. Reggie White, and Walter Cronkite establish the girls' place in history; the words of Maxine McNair, Chris McNair, and Alpha Robertson express the crushing impact of the event in personal terms. It is a pain that, even after three decades, has not fully healed. As the sister of one of the victims explains, "You may not remember the details, but know how you felt [at the time]."
4 LITTLE GIRLS therefore works on several levels, and that's the true nature of its mastery. Not only is it an excellent piece of historical research (no one under 40 is likely to recall the events of the day, except as learned from books and secondhand accounts), but it's also a solid piece of drama. It's one thing to hear a talking head drone on about the importance of this event to the future of civil rights, but another thing altogether to hear the tearful, heartwrenching account of a mother as she tries to describe the depth of her loss.
This is how Walter Cronkite describes the situation: "I don't think the white community really understood... the depths of the hate of the [Ku Klux] Klan and its friends in the south... until that incredibly mean, perverted terrible crime of blowing up kids in a Sunday school basement... At the moment that bomb went off and those four little girls were blasted and buried in the debris of the church, America understood the real nature of the hate that was preventing integration... This was the awakening." And, while this is arguably the most significant aspect of the tale told by 4 LITTLE GIRLS, it's not the only angle that Lee presents, and that's why this movie bears not only the appellation of an "important documentary", but of a "very good film" as well.
Copyright 1997 James Berardinelli
- James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@mail.cybernex.net
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"The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it..."
- Jean-Luc Godard
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