Cabin in the Sky (1943)

Little Joe Jackson (Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson) is a compulsive gambler, and all around no good husband, who gets killed during a bad gambling transaction. As he laid dying on his death bed he receives a visit from Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram) who is there to collect Little Joe’s soul. Petunia (Ethel Waters) is a good Christian woman, and is a faithful wife to Little Joe. She knows deep down inside he is a good person. When she sees that he has died, she pleads to the heavens to let him live, and here is where the movie gets fun. An angel appears and begins to challenge Lucifer Jr. as to who gets the soul of Little Joe. Eventually they give him six more months to fix his life or he will be damned to hell. Throughout the remainder of the film you see the influences of the devil and the angel on his shoulder. This was a telling of the story Faust, but it was done by an all African-American cast, and it was set to music. Louise Armstrong plays a minion of Lucifer Jr. (sadly the version the library had was edited and did not have the cut with his big music scenes in it), Duke Ellington and his Orchestra played a role, Lena Horne, was a love interest/temptation for Little Joe, and many other prominent actors of that era. If you like southern gospel sound, jazz, and good/simple musical numbers this show is for you. I read up a little bit on this movie and MGM did recycle shots of the tornado from the Wizard of Oz in the making of this movie. This is a sit back and enjoy movie, it is not complicated and does not take a lot of effort to concentrate on. However, at the beginning of the movie there was this warning: “The films you are about to see are a product of their time. They may reflect some of the prejudices that were commonplace in American society, especially when it came to the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. These films are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. While the following certainly does not represent Warner Bros.’ opinion in today’s society, these images do accurately reflect a part of our history that cannot and should not be ignored.” 3 ½ for me.