What Are The Similarities Between Within Our Gates And The Pianist

In 1920, Oscar Micheaux produced the film Within Our Gates which demonstrates the racial tensions between blacks and whites that existed during the Harlem Renaissance period in the United States. The film shares common elements with Roman Polanski’s motion picture The Pianist (2002), a movie based on the memoirs of Polish-Jewish composer Władysław Szpilman who survived the Holocaust. Even though both movies focus on two different historical events, the Harlem Renaissance and the Holocaust, both films expose mankind’s sinister and inhumane nature when confronted with a group of people who look differently or maintain a different belief system. The fact that both films, Within Our Gates and The Pianist, do not elaborate on the actual history leading up to the injustices which occurred; instead, they focus on the violent injustices which tore families apart.

The two directors, Micheaux and Polanski, were subject to the oppressive cultures in their respective lifetimes.

Micheaux’s film depicts the racial conflict and segregation that appears in the North and South. Old Ned, a black preacher, states to himself that “Negroes and whites—all are equal” (Within Our Gates). Contrary to his statement, the film frequently shows blacks oppressed by whites as being inferior. For example, a white woman by the name of Mrs. Geraldine Stratton says that “it is an error to try and educate [blacks]…thinking would only give them a headache” (Within Our Gates). Despite Mrs. Stratton’s regressive thinking, a light skinned black man named Dr. Vivian is portrayed as a well-mannered, educated black man of the North. The portrayal of Dr. Vivian can be juxtaposed with Władysław Szpilman, the protagonist in Polanski’s The Pianist, because Szpilman is an educated Polish-Jewish composer who is renowned in the city of Warsaw up until the German invasion (The Pianist). This dichotomy demonstrates that the oppressors will always view the oppressed as inferior regardless of intellectual

capabilities.
As The Pianist portrays, the German Nazis that invade Warsaw show no regard for Jewish intellect or prosperity. The goal of the Germans is to identify the Jews, then gradually herd the Jews into camps. Polanski identifies with Szpilman because he too survived the oppressive conditions of the Holocaust by remaining hidden, and he witnessed the cruelty and discrimination of his fellow man first-hand. Polanski’s mother was one of the thousands of victims who died in a Nazi concentration camp (“Roman Polanski”).
Micheaux’s film, Within Our Gates, reflects a similar violent discrimination. The film portrays Jasper Landry being wrongfully blamed for the death of the white landlord, Philip Griddlestone. The wrongful accusation leads to the brutal hanging of Jasper Landry and his wife at the hands of a white mob. The mob, then, proceeds to hunt down and lynch Griddlestone’s black servant, Efrem. Micheaux suggests, through his film, that the blind hatred within mankind can lead to unintelligible evil, the kind of evil that leads to the genocide or enslavement of a race. Similarly, we see soldiers in The Pianist blindly following orders as they brutally exterminate Jewish citizens.
Both films recall intense hardships faced by an oppressed group, but they both also display great acts of courage to overcome these hardships. Micheaux’s defiance of Hollywood’s portrayal of blacks by implementing handsome men and beautiful women talking like people; and Polanski’s portrayal of Szpilman, who struggled to evade the Nazi invasion, reflects the will to press on in the most trying times. While the two films reflect two different oppressive forces, the nature of their evil sprouts from the same tree of ignorance.