This starts with Robert E. Lee proclaiming that slavery is evil. It's 1856. "Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, whose gentle rule of the slaves was typical of the South." They even arrange the marriage of two fair-skinned slaves, Eliza and George Harris. Uncle Tom is their beloved slave. However, the institution of slavery insists on tearing this happy plantation apart.

It's the classic anti-slavery book brought to film. There is no doubt that the attempt is sincere and the production does not spare the expense but there are elements which have aged very badly. First, all the main slave characters are played by white actors except for Uncle Tom. I get the idea of differentiating between light-skinned and dark-skinned slaves. It's a little jarring to have them actually be white or in one case, doing blackface. In one way, I understand playing to the audience of the day. In another way, it looks very bad to a modern audience. Of course, there are the white saviors all over this movie. The little girl is literally sainted on film. For me, the most compelling scene is the one female slave who refuses to accept an apple from the little girl. I'm glad that this movie has that one scene. It's almost self-aware of its own racial insensitivity. Again, times have changed. Audiences in its day would love the little girl sainted for helping the slaves. Finally, there is no excusing Topsy which was probably meant to be funny and heartbreaking back then but OMG. This has not aged well.

Okay, it's true that people watching this well-intentioned movie today will very likely be offended by some of the over-the-top imagery of happy slaves singing and dancing and enjoying their bondage during the first portion of the film. This "happy slave" myth is advanced in the film--most likely to assuage the guilt of White America concerning the evil of slavery. However, once this section of the film is over, the rest of the film is amazingly well done and the treatment of slaves in the film is exceptional for its time. So, before you dismiss this film for some relatively minor racist images, understand that the 1920s saw an amazing re-birth of the KKK and the movie's message of love and tolerance is a strong counterpoint to this racist organization.

While the original story by Harriet Beecher Stowe is extremely melodramatic and, at times, silly, this film is actually better than this source material. Plus, as the movie was made after the Civil War while the book was made in the 1850s (before the war),they were able to give it a more satisfying conclusion--leaving the audience with an uplifting segment where the Union Army frees the slaves of Simon Legree's hellish plantation.

The movie gets very high marks for some of the camera-work--especially the rousing scene where Liza crosses the ice flow with her young son. While this sort of scene had been done before on film, its realism still makes it a high mark in the history of silent film. Acting is generally good--particularly by Mr. Lowe as Uncle Tom, though there were quite a few silly and overacted scenes here and there. And, while this was one of the most expensive silent films ever made, the film is quite lovely and it looks like they got their money's worth.

In these days Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel of Uncle Tom's Cabin is known more by historians as a contributing cause of the Civil War than as an actual literary work. I would happily include myself in that number. The only exposure I had to the story at all was in watching The King And I where Tuptim puts on the play for the king recognizing the story as an indictment of slavery. So sadly did the king, but that's another story.

What you're seeing in this 1927 version is not Harriet Beecher Stowe's story, it couldn't be because there are references in the film to the Dred Scott decision, the firing on Fort Sumter and the Emancipation Proclamation all in the future because her story was published in 1852.

What slaves, free blacks, and sympathetic northerners like the Quaker family you see who rescue Eliza and her baby are afraid of the new strict fugitive slave law. The law was part of the Compromise of 1850 which almost mandated help for slave catchers who found runaway slaves in the north. It was a stench in the nostrils of folks like the Quakers who were prominent in the anti-slavery movement.

We're not seeing Stowe's story, but we are seeing her vision of the cruelty of slavery as an institution. Even the idea that black people were to be thought of as equal was radical in too many eyes back in the day.

Stowe used a lot of what would later be labeled stereotypes, most importantly the phrase 'Uncle Tom'. That which denotes a person willing to accept inequality in all its forms. The criticism has certain validity, but I think for the wrong reasons.

As seen her old Uncle Tom is the elder head of the plantation blacks on a Kentucky estate who the master even trusts to go to free state Ohio on business for him. No one can believe that Uncle Tom actually returns, the criticism is that his pride is so broken he accepts what the slave owners give him.

Tom returns, not because he accepts, but because in that cabin are his wife and children, even in slavery he's a family man. This is the most horrible thing of all for Stowe, the human beings are property. Even the kindly masters shown here like the Shelbys, Tom's owners accumulate debts and have to sell Tom and break up that family. Families being destroyed is the cardinal sin for Stowe.

Except for young Virginia Grey playing little Eliza the innocent who hasn't learned to regard certain people as beneath treating as human, most people today won't know the cast members. Some might know Lucien Littlefield who has a small role as a bottom feeding slave dealer. This was not a profession that attracted the best in society. James B. Lowe as Uncle Tom you will not forget, he invests great dignity in the original Uncle Tom role of them all.