It's so easy to name all the things Paul Robeson was: son of an ex-slave who himself went on to graduate from college and become a minister; only the third black student ever accepted at Rutgers (and the only one on campus at the time); astar athlete and All-American; valedictorian; law school graduate and practicing attorney; singer; concert virtuoso; writer; thinker; activist; Socialist; Broadway star; Shakespearean actor; enemy of the United States; self-exiled expatriate—that it's easy to forget what he's not. A superstar. Granted, he's a well-worn icon in the world of ethnic entertainers, a premier example of stoicism and skill overcoming some of the most tenuous and tumultuous times in American history. Yet no matter how many degrees he hung on his wall or battles he chose to fight for both himself and his people, the films he made are not the missing masterpieces in the overall history of African-American cinema. Instead, they are obvious examples of one amazing human figure being improperly pigeonholed within a horribly racist entertainment dynamic. That's the chief revelation to be gleaned from the Criterion Collection's new box-set release, Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist. His body of work may be impressive for what it means, given the background of when and where it was created. But this is a clear case of the whole being much more valuable than the many pieces that comprise it.
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