Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Filmmaker Harry Pollard’s epic 1927 adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the most expensive silent films ever made. James B. Lowe, whose composure, dignity, and gentleness suggest a silent-era Danny Glover, stars as kindly Tom, an enslaved man ripped from his family to pay his master’s debt, but the film favors the more sensational melodrama of the married light-skinned couple Eliza and George and their son Harry (all played by white performers), who are split up and sold to the highest bidder. Pollard, a Southerner himself, maintains an uneasy balance between a sentimental portrayal of a happy Dixie with smiling slaves and a land where humans are bought and sold like cattle to wicked, money-grubbing masters. The exaggerated performances and stereotypes have not aged well and Pollard shows a weakness for broad Victorian melodrama, but the film boasts many moving moments and nail-biting sequences, highlighted by Eliza’s now-classic harrowing escape across the ice floes as hounds literally nip at her heels. Presented in a new 2K restoration with the original Movietone score by Erno Rapee, the disc also includes the 1958 re-issue edition (introduced and narrated by Raymond Massey), earlier 1910 and 1914 (preserved by the Library of Congress) adaptations of the novel, audio commentary by historian Edward J. Blum, and a booklet. A comprehensive edition of a notable silent classic, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)