To study African-American history, which has become a politically charged act in America like no time since the early 1970s, is usually less about understanding a minority group and more about looking at the country’s character in a less glowing light. Which is why unsurprisingly, some would rather us forget African-American history altogether.
Fortunately for us, Sam Pollard is a filmmaker who has charged himself with ensuring we remember. With a career as an editor, producer, and director of non-fiction films that goes back to 1978, Pollard is quickly becoming one of our most prolific and vital documentarians. His name was introduced to a whole generation due to his regular collaboration with Spike Lee (Pollard’s creative relationship with Lee precedes the latter’s foray into documentary film, he actually cut “Mo’Better Blues” and three other of Lee’s narrative features before editing Lee’s landmark, Academy-Award nominated 1999 documentary “4 Little Girls,” and then going on to win several Peabody Awards with Lee’s outstanding Katrina docs).
Pollard’s career has been dedicated to African-American history, either profiles of towering figures like MLK, Maynard Jackson, Jr., Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur Ashe, or Bill Russell. Pollard has also focused on Black political struggle going back to the legendary “Eyes on the Prize” series, the second season of which he served as one of the series’ directors. His other more recent docs have told the story of slavery’s enduring legacy in this country and the fight for political enfranchisement. And that’s what makes his latest a perfect fit for his storytelling gifts.
“The League,” tells the story of the Negro Baseball League from its origins, its peak in the early 1940s, and its inevitable decline in the postwar period. While devotees of the nation’s pastime will undoubtedly appreciate this film, this is not just a sports doc. Sports for African-Americans have always been a tool of resistance. This is never more true than here, when enterprising African-Americans, seeing the hardening walls of segregation in Major League Baseball, opted to create their own leagues in the early days of the 20th century.
Pollard’s doc eschews a narrator and instead turns to a chorus of voices to tell this story. Chief among those voices is the late Bob Motley, a Negro League umpire, whose memoir becomes the backbone of the film. Contemporary journalists and baseball historians provide the other vital interviews, and Pollard balances their contributions with archival footage, a smattering of stylized re-enactments, and a bit of animation.
Documentary these days can feel so wracked by insecurity as cinema that it embraces a hyper stylization that feels more like an aesthetically ambitious advertisement. Pollard’s confidence in his material and decades of experience save the film from being bogged down by strenuous efforts to be “cinematic” in the shallowest sense of the word. Instead, Pollard allows us to focus on the story. And while some elements of the story may be better known than others, there are some wonderful surprises in store. Pollard takes names like “Rube” Foster, Effa Manley, Josh Gibson, Cumberland Posey, and Gus Greenlee and makes each into unforgettable and complex people who shaped the history of their times. As for the more well-known figures in the film, like the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige and the trailblazing Jackie Robinson, Pollard places both in the context of their time and place.
In the case of the latter player, Pollard manages to pull off a tall order: he doesn’t diminish Robinson even though we know greater players were produced by the Negro Leagues. Robinson’s story and the eventual integration that would sound the death knell for Black baseball is a truly compelling example of being a victim of your own success.
Pollard nor his interview subjects want to romanticize the segregation that led to the Negro Leagues, but they also ask us to think about the price paid for that progress. [B+]
