Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Uptight Blu-ray Movie Review

Outasight.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 12, 2012

Jules Dassin certainly has one of the most fascinating filmographies in the annals of cinema. After having made his mark as an actor with a Yiddish troupe in New York City, Dassin matriculated to Hollywood where he found work as an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock, among others. He then rather quickly started making shorts and B-movies, including everything from an adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story (The Tell-Tale Heart) to an interesting comedy called The Affairs of Martha which plays like a kind of white bread precursor to The Help, when an unidentified maid to some tony Caucasians on Long Island find out she’s writing a tell all book, leading everyone with a maid to panic. Dassin quickly became an A-lister, working with everyone from Joan Crawford (Reunion in France) to Charles Laughton (The Canterville Ghost), becoming one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s most dependable and versatile helmsmen. Dassin was at the height of his powers in 1948 when his Naked City was released, a film that helped solidify several elements in the noir genre, but his follow up, Thieves’ Highway, was pounded out fairly quickly for Fox under the threat of imminent blacklisting, something that did in fact happen, bringing Dassin’s American film career to a sudden screeching halt (Bette Davis did manage to get him a little work directing her failed Broadway revue Two’s Company). One of his best known films, 1950’s Night and the City (also a Fox release), was made in London, and his hugely influential 1955 opus Rififi, was a French production. Dassin continued to work, sporadically at least, in Europe and he managed to have two significant hits starring his future wife Melina Mercouri, including her Oscar winning turn in Never on Sunday, and, five years later, the Rififi-esque Topkapi, which won co-star Peter Ustinov his second Oscar. But Dassin hadn’t made an American film for decades when he took on the rather unusual property of Uptight (AKA Up Tight!), a 1968 film made at the height of racial unrest in the United States and which must have seemed frighteningly militant to audiences of the day. One of the most interesting things about Uptight is the fact that it’s a kind of unexpected reworking of the hoary but still viscerally impactful The Informer, a novel by Liam O’Flaherty which became an extremely well regarded 1935 John Ford film which won Academy Awards for Ford, star Victor McLaglen, scenarist Dudley Nichols, and composer Max Steiner. The rather startling idea of transporting a story about the Irish revolution to the ghettos of Cleveland is arresting, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the transition is smooth or even particularly effective.

Dassin seemed to take the slights fate had dealt him with a fairly sanguine attitude, at least on the surface, but could there have been a very understandable rage simmering just underneath? And could that rage have been translated into the rather presciently political subtext of Uptight? How else to explain a director, even one as averse to a stylistic rut as Dassin, going from something like the frothy comedy of Topkapi to something like this, a veritable screed about racial injustice and both the benefits and drawbacks of an undisguised militancy? As “now” as Uptight must have seemed in 1968—and it certainly has a “ripped from the headlines” demeanor, replete with a major plot point concerning the then recent assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—structurally it is still encumbered by the kind of well meaning left leaning ethos that colored not just The Informer, but a whole movement of theater and film in the 1930s especially.

The focus of Uptight is Tank (Julian Mayfield, who receives an “Introducing” credit in this film despite having one previous credit on IMDb, but who evidently never made another film after this one). Tank has been part of The Committee, a rabble rousing militant faction of Cleveland’s African American population, led by a natty martinet played by Raymond St. Jacques. The film opens with some incredible footage taken during the aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, and then segues to Cleveland, where Tank is obviously distraught over the murder. A trio of his Committee cohorts show up to enlist Tank in their long planned for robbery of some guns and ammo, but Tank is drunk and doesn’t want to participate.

The robbery goes off without Tank’s involvement, but in the melée, a guard is shot and killed and ringleader Johnny (Max Julien) leaves behind his jacket which has a label identifying its owner inside. Meanwhile a slimy informant named Clarence (Roscoe Lee Browne) is working the angles with the Cleveland police force and thinks he can manipulate Tank into giving up Johnny’s whereabouts. Tank is extremely conflicted over everything and attempts to ingratiate himself with The Committee to no avail. That sets up the central conflict of Uptight, where we witness Tank’s slow but steady emotional and mental breakdown as he attempts to fight forces which are clearly beyond his control.

Uptight is a fascinating historical document, one absolutely bristling with “Black Power” anger and a barely disguised disdain for those who would continue to argue for conciliation in the face of repeated tragedies like the assassination of Dr. King. Dassin and his co-scenarists Ruby Dee (who has a featured role in the film) and Mayfield obviously color their framing by giving us several characters who are conflicted about how to respond to the murder of King and indeed to the continuing oppression of their race, but there’s a real and very potent rage in this film that is incredibly unsettling and must have been downright terrifying to 1968 audiences.

Rather interestingly, I once came across an old Scholastic magazine from 1968 that was obviously aimed at middle schoolers and which featured Uptight as a cover story, replete with talking points and a comparison to The Informer. This strikes me as absolutely incredible for a couple of reasons. The film is rife with the “n”-word, which perhaps hadn’t yet become the pariah it would, but which is bandied about by the various blacks in the film with obviously pejorative intent. There’s even a brief scene where the guard at the gun warehouse is ogling pinups of naked women and the distinct implication is that he’s pleasuring himself as he focuses his flashlights on the nudes. I have to wonder how many kids insisted their parents take them to this film after the Scholastic write up and who then encountered shocked, even dismayed, reactions from those parents once the film started to unfold.

Jules Dassin’s career was a valiant lesson in overcoming adversity and that same subtext informs (no pun intended) Uptight. The film is amazingly “current” despite its obviously dated setting and in some cases costumes (by Broadway’s legendary Theoni V. Aldredge) and patois. The film has a couple of sadly ludicrous elements (a carnival scene with just outlandishly lampooned white people for example) that undercut its overall dramatic intensity, and some elements of its source novel and film don’t translate easily into this new milieu. But Uptight remains a startling sociopolitical document of an era when nonviolence was being questioned and the Black Power movement decided to forcefully take matters into its own hands.

Uptight Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Uptight is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is generally speaking a very sharp and well detailed looking high definition presentation, with very robust color and extremely strong contrast, something which helps this often dimly lit film to pop rather well, all things considered. There is a rather large amount of grain on display throughout this proceeding, and that verges toward the digital noise side of things in several very dark scenes. There are some niggling issues to mention. In the robbery scene, there are some brief density and flicker problems in a couple of shots, something that also crops up in a later sequence that also takes place in very dark surroundings. There are also some very minor damage issues that crop up from time to time. This was the next to the last film lensed by the legendary Boris Kaufman (On the Waterfront), who brings a gritty, urban look to the film that is very well represented in this high definition presentation.

Uptight Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Uptight has a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track that nicely reproduces the soul and blues drenched score by Booker T. and the MG's. Dialogue is also very cleanly and clearly presented. This is obviously a very narrow track, but it sounds very good and has no damage to report. Fidelity is excellent and all frequency ranges are reproduced with appealing fullness.

Uptight Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included on this Blu-ray disc.

Uptight Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Uptight serves as a fascinating historical document for an era where race relations were precipitously poised to devolve into outright anarchy (as they actually did in many infamous riots). This was probably the most tumultuous moment for race relations in the United States until the horrible aftermath of the Rodney King verdict, and Uptight captures it all with riveting, if sometimes theatrical, detail. The film has a glut of fantastic supporting performances by some incredibly gifted black actors, something that perhaps points out Mayfield's lack of real nuance in the leading role. But overall this is a one of a kind film experience that would make for a fascinating double feature with Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool. This Blu-ray offers very good video and excellent audio and comes Recommended.