Cinema: Mother's Day

BLACK GIRL

Directed by OSSIE DAVIS

Screenplay by J.E. FRANKLIN

One of the most pernicious effects of the new black movies is their reinforcement of racial stereotypes: men are studs, women tools, politics irrelevant, life-style supreme, crime—generally of an unbelievably flamboyant variety—the only means of surmounting social inequality. Perhaps the most telling of Black Girl's numerous virtues is its assault on one of the most durable of all myths, the bedrock indomitability of the black woman as mother and source of familial strength. For the children in this story, survival is as much a...