The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin Page B

gather that he has been married before, to a black woman, who died. This informs us that, in spite of his brilliance, he is not presumptuous, and he is not an upstart, unstable adventurer: nothing less than real love would have driven him so far beyond the boundaries of caste. This love is, also, quite remarkably self-effacing. He informs the girl’s parents that, even though their daughter may be prepared to marry
him
without their consent,
he
will not marry
her
without it. The girl loves her parents too much, he explains, to be able to endure such a rupture; nor can he himself, for reasons of his own, bear to be the author of such pain.
    Since history affords so few examples of this species of restraint on the part of the prospective bridegroom, perhaps we should take a closer look at him: and try to find out what he is actually saying. I scarcely have the heart to indicate the echoes to be found, here, of
In Abraham’s Bosom
(yes: the supplicant of Paul Green’s
In Abraham’s Bosom
) nor do more than indicate the existence of Eugene O’Neill’s
All God’s Chillun Got Wings
, or the terror underlying
The Hairy Ape:
not now can I tell you: the road was rocky. The setting of
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
is the key. We are on the heights of San Francisco—at a time not too far removed from the moment when the city of San Francisco reclaimed the land at Hunter’s Point and urban-renewalized the niggers out of it. The difficult and terrified city, where the niggers are, lives far beneath these heights. The father is in a perfectly respectable, perhaps even admirable profession, and the mother runs an art gallery. The setting is a brilliant re-creation of a certain—and far from unattractive—level of American life. And the black doctor is saying, among other things, that his presence in this landscape (this hard-won Eden) will do nothing to threaten,or defile it—indeed, since in the event that he marries the girl, they are immediately going to the Far East, or some such place, he will not even be present. One can scarcely imagine striking a bargain more painless; and without even losing a daughter, who will, merely, in effect, be traveling, and broadening her education; keeping in touch via trans-Pacific telephone, and coming home to San Francisco from time to time, with her yet more various, toddling, and exotic acquisitions.
    This moment in the film is handled with such skill that one would certainly prefer to believe it, if one could. Only the fact that one does not believe it prevents one from resenting it. No man in love is so easily prepared to surrender his beloved, or travel so many thousands of miles to do so: no one expects such behavior from Steve McQueen. Without belaboring this sufficiently glaring point, the basis for such suspense as the film may hope to claim having now been established, we are confronted with a series of classical tableaux:
    We have already met the white, backward, uneducated taxi driver, mightily displeased by the glimpse he catches, in his rearview mirror, of our lovers, kissing. He conveys his displeasure, failing to shake the doctor’s cool: indeed, the doctor tips him.
    We have already met the mother’s assistant at the art gallery, a white woman, along with a particularly gruesome (and very cunningly used) example of modern art. The doctor toys with this dreadful object, as he toys with the woman’s avid curiosity, and our lovers leave.
    We meet the mother and the father, distressed domestic tête-à-tête, etc.—at which point we are informed of the doctor’s staggering achievements—and now we meet the loyal nigger maid.
    It so happened that I saw
The Birth of a Nation
and
GuessWho’s Coming to Dinner
on the same day—the first in the morning, the second in the afternoon. It happened, also, that I saw both films in the company of a young African girl, a Cameroons journalist. This girl has never seen America, and, understandably, took my testimony concerning my