“The Blues Under the Skin” honors the music and Black experience

In his 1973 “The Blues Under the Skin,” Greek activist, poet, and director Roviros Manthoulis interweaves three threads: performances by musical legends, a fictional narrative set in Harlem, and incarcerated men at a Texas prison farm where inmates work fields and roads. Also listed as “Blues with clenched teeth,” fifty years on, the film loses none of its relevance.

Called a cultural documentary, the blues continue to resonate as “the voice of the Black experience,” as opening titles state. Studying film at Syracuse University in the early 1950s, Greek by birth, Manthoulis lived most of his life in Paris because of his opposition to his country’s dictatorship. Always sensitive to oppression in all its global manifestations, he said in 2016 interview with “Medium” that he “realized that Black music was the real American culture and Black music was the blues.” He communicates his immersion in the artistry of the blues and the lived experiences that feed it in a visceral way, noting that “Bluesmen don’t easily speak about their past lives, especially about the hard times. They sing them.” 

Featured here is the musical expertise of twelve great bluesmen, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Robert Pete Williams, Furry Lewis, B.B. King, and more.   Inelegant editing often segues among scenes, but even that works to forge the relationship between forty-four-year-old Freddy Feester, an ex-felon who can’t get a job, and Hattie, described as a young Black couple living in the ghetto of an American city. Freddy’s mother, known as Mamma, is a unique woman in her own right, no nonsense, one commanding the screen, doing almost nothing except exuding her life. Interspersed, the Texas farm prisoners speak volumes through their singing as white overseers on horseback stand guard, reminiscent of “Cool Hand Luke.” With visits to New Orleans for music events and throughout the Mississippi Delta, the Blues animate this world.

In a new 2K restoration, in English and French with English subtitles, “The Blues Under the Skin” screens at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium one night only, Tuesday, September 3, at 7:30 that evening.  For more information, you may visit the film series website.