Black Caesar 4K 1973 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Harlem, 1960s. Tommy Gibbs, a young enterprising dark-skinned gangster, tramples his way into the mafia upper reaches of New York. Naturally, this road is not lined with flowers, but with the corpses of the Italian clan, whose place Tommy took. Having taken possession of accounting books containing tons of dirt, he made himself virtually untouchable. But the demand for these books is growing.

Review 4K Movie

Black Caesar is only Larry Cohen's second film as a director. He first gained success writing screenplays for westerns and noir films, and later, in the 1970s and 1980s, directing low-budget but incredibly stylish horror films such as It Lives 1-3, Q, 'God Told Me To' and ‘Return to Salem's Lot’, and finally, the screenplay for the film ‘Phone Booth’ starring Colin Farrell. In short, he was a versatile personality, so to speak. Larry began his directing career with two blaxploitation films (gangster films about black people, i.e., African Americans) - ‘The Bone’ and ‘Black Caesar’ in 1973, naturally based on his own screenplays.

The film took 18 days to shoot, which is interesting in itself. Most of the setting was Larry Cohen's own house in Los Angeles (previously owned by another entertaining director, Samuel Fuller), which conveniently had a swimming pool, a spacious hall, and enough rooms to shoot a feature film. That's not all. Larry also didn't forget about his mother's apartment in a high-rise in Manhattan. Plus, there's a scene shot (for free, of course) in Larry Cohen's lawyer's office.

And what about the guerrilla-style filming on the streets of New York, where real people in the frame react to what is happening as if it were not a movie! Or the taxi chase on the sidewalk—so that no one would leave the buildings, the film crew stretched a rope along an entire block, blocking the doors with it. Twice, the police almost arrested (and the second time, almost shot) the actors running through Manhattan with weapons in their hands — and no wonder.

I don't know if Cohen is familiar with another prominent New York Jew named Lloyd Kaufman, owner of the trash company Troma, but they would definitely find common ground. After all, it's a real high art to “create an illusion for pennies” when a director is able to shoot a “nightclub” in his living room by simply turning off the lights, adding a little smoke, and putting a couple of his friends and his wife in front of the camera as extras. In Cohen's films, people enter a building in New York and find themselves in Los Angeles. Everything in this film is an illusion — the very “magic of cinema” in action.

The story as a whole is very reminiscent of Brian De Palma's Scarface, which came out ten years after Black Caesar. But there are no drugs here — Cohen always shied away from that subject. And Tommy Gibbs is definitely a black Tony Montana. He is just as possessive and selfish, seemingly taking revenge on the whole world for not being born rich and white.

The penultimate scene of the murder of his old enemy, a police officer who beat Tommy as a child and is now his business partner, is truly powerful and brutal, but at the same time not without meaning. The final episode is just as powerful, with wounded Tommy limping through the ruins of his native neighborhood, clutching his priceless accounting books, only to be killed by juvenile criminals. They kill him, Tommy Gibbs, who until recently was the owner of the whole world and the father of Harlem, take his wallet, remove his watch from his wrist, but leave the accounting books.

The film does not give the impression of a classic blaxploitation film. In his commentary on the film, Cohen mentions more than once that he tried to move away from the stereotypes of this genre, which is confined to rather narrow boundaries. The film is not only entertaining as a piece of cinema, but is also interesting as a drama and a living example of how, contrary to all logic, it is possible to shoot quickly, cheaply, and with high quality.

I forgot something... That's right. The music. James Brown himself was responsible for the film's musical score, and this was his first soundtrack. What can I say - great black songs, spirituals, rock - everything is in its place.

And here's another interesting fact: there's a sequel. It's called Hell Up in Harlem, and despite the “not very positive” ending of the first part, there's a reasonable explanation for that:

Larry Cohen and producer Samuel Arkoff couldn't agree on whether Tommy Gibbs should be killed at the end. Cohen did it his way. But at the preview, the audience categorically did not like the lack of a happy ending. And copies had already been sent to cinemas. What to do? On the day of the premiere, Larry went around New York theaters and personally cut the ending of the film—from then on, the wounded Tommy Gibbs wanders through the ruins of Harlem, followed by the credits. Well, the “tragic” ending was sold to Europe—Europeans are used to that.

And the film was a huge success—it was a real hit. Only Europe saw the original version of Black Caesar. And of course, Arkoff decided to make a sequel, since the main character was alive and money was flowing in.