The Tallest Tree in Our Forest
- Video
- 1977
- 1h 26m
Detailed biography of famed singer, actor, athlete and activist Paul Robeson. Complete with several interviews and footage of concerts and film clips.Detailed biography of famed singer, actor, athlete and activist Paul Robeson. Complete with several interviews and footage of concerts and film clips.Detailed biography of famed singer, actor, athlete and activist Paul Robeson. Complete with several interviews and footage of concerts and film clips.
Photos
- Self - Composer
- (archive sound)
- Self
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- Self
- (archive footage)
- Self
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- Self
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- Self
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- Self
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- Self
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- Self
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- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- Quotes
Self - Musician: He used to come to see me. I remember one time in the midst of his troubles, you know, troubles he was having with the government, denial of opportunity to proceed, to pursue his livelihood. He'd just been at a meeting, there was a meeting on 125th Street, and I was appearing at the Apollo at the time. You know, I was in the audience to listen to him speak. And I went back to the theater and then I got a telegram, a little later, saying that he was in the show, he went and caught the performance, but, he didn't come back stage because he didn't want to subject me to any kind of harassment or anything. I said, I called him up and I said, "If I got to be harassed, by your presence, I'll take it. That'll be my cross to bear and let me bear my own cross" Yes, because, he was really something special.
I've admired Robeson as a singer for decades I"m not old enough to have seen him on the stage in "straight" shows, but he was evidently very impressive there as well. His phenomenal speaking voice, rich, low, with remarkable diction, suggests that he could have been formidable.
It's a shame that his few movies don't do him justice, but there just weren't good roles for Black male leads during his heyday.
This 90 minute movie is a mixed bag. There are certainly some interesting scenes and material in it. But the sound - at least on the copy TCM showed - varied from poor to inaudible, and the color was not much better. I gather that it was a very low-budget movie reproduced on inexpensive film stock that has not aged well - at least in the case of the copy TCM ran. This would seem to be producer/director Gil Noble's only movie, so I suspect it was a labor of love, the offshoot of a tv series he did devoted to Black affairs. The page here on IMDB devoted to it covers just the bare minimum and is, I suspect, recent.
In the end, readers of this review will want to know if it is worth their time to watch the movie. I would definitely say yes. If you know nothing about Robeson other than what you can find on Wikipedia, it's a good way to go further. Just be prepared for some bad sound and poor visuals.
- richard-1787
- Sep 26, 2021
Details
- Runtime1 hour 26 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1