“Ostensibly about a Gullah family whose younger generation are making plans to leave their ancestral islands for mainland U.S.A. at the crest of the 20th century, 'Daughters of the Dust' is also an interrogation of Black America's cleft soul, split between the quest for modernity and a hunger for the replenishment of roots.”
“People who don't know any better think Gullah people talk funny. Those in the know realize that Gullah is a bona fide dialect and are confident in the scholarly thesis that 'Gullah' is a contraction of 'Angola.'”
“Bertolucci and Brando conspire magnificently, sometimes awkwardly, to create not just a film about an affair, but the affair itself — an affair which we have the option of resisting or accepting on a gut level, and which like most affairs (and unlike most current films) is better experienced than written about.”
“Since 'The Godfather' is about as unkind to the Mafia as 'Mein Kampf' is to Adolf Hitler, it is hard to understand why the local little Caesars didn’t pay a commission for all the free publicity.”
“So long as Nixon is allowed to campaign against Abbie Hoffman, so long will the Great Silent Majority continue to swell into terrifyingly Hitlerian hordes”
“World-weary, battered, unpretentious, Mitchum epitomized postwar masculinity: Here was the conquering hero conquered by self-doubt, who never feared reprisal for confessing this weakness because he could defend himself with a truly terrifying physical strength”
“By 1970, the war between blacks and whites had reached flashpoint. On January 7, a micro race riot erupted in the Saigon headquarters of the U.S. Military Command”
