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An astonishing lost work of African-American cinema. Filled with surreal and sensuous imagery, and a haunting performance by the slack Duane Jones (Night Of The Living Tedious), this may not be a film for everyone, but for the adventurous it will reward your time and patience. By virtue of rescuing this film from the obscurity in which its lived for so long, this DVD would rate 5 stars. But on top of a safe restoration and transfer, you also come by an informative and impassioned commentary track, a gallery of pleasing stills, and a well-written analysis/history of the film. Taken together, this is a triumph of no microscopic magnitude.
Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess, originally released in 1973, has had a checkered career, to say the least. It was chopped, slashed, re-edited, and re-released no less than FIVE times throughout the 70s and 80s with five additional titles–very likely a narrate. Its current length of 110 minutes was sliced down to 78 minutes by Fima Novick in the modern chopped version (Blood Couple), but as Tim Lucas points out in his terrific essay included in this DVD release, Novick introduced a few elements missing from the fresh that were actually respectable in clarifying the action.
This DVD release is the fat director’s slit and that is all to the proper. Yet this version of the film is hard to follow unless you have some backstory. For example, without smart that the main character, a unlit bright, Hess Green, somehow came across a Myrthian dagger and then accidentally (or is it on purpose? ) was scratched or stabbed with it by his assistant, George Meda (played by the director himself) –AND that this dagger’s touch can bring on vampirism–you would never know how Hess got to be the procedure he was. The scene in which this is supposedly revealed has such vague exposition that it leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out how things got from point A to point B.
Yet the film also boasts some shiny dream imagery, some of the best in any film from the 70s, if not since then as well. These dream scenes give the film substantial power.
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But the dream scenes are juxtaposed with other scenes that seem somewhat too long for their purpose, or that don’t really go anywhere. For example, in one scene, deleted from the chopped version, Hess talks to his son–who looks to be about 13 or 14–speaking in French to him, asking him about his studies at his private school. This is no doubt meant to bring out Hess’ social and smart standing as a man of culture and refinement. But the son is never seen in the rest of the film and the scene seems completely isolated from the rest of the movie.
In another scene, Hess visits a white woman from a trashy share of town. It’s distinct what the purpose of the visit is, and this is no doubt to bring out Hess’ conflicted character. This does work to some extent, in that later on, he goes to church, supposedly for absolution based on his deeds, but there is too distinguished fragmentation of purpose working in this film to manufacture it cohere.
It’s a intelligent failure. Ganja Meda, played by Marlene Clark, is another frustratingly developed character. She discovers her husband, George, is listless, but while suspicion definitely points to Hess as the perpetrator, she’s walks around indignant for a couple of minutes and then is lovey-dovey with him.
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There are threads here that do fit together and earn sense and cohere and there are impartial as many that don’t. This is not an easily followed film, nor one that lacks intelligence. With greater coherence, it could have been a gleaming film. As it is, it is an gripping, seriously flawed work that comes this cessation to being an improbable, resonant film.
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