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It was in the year of 1933,
and Grace and her father were heading southward
with their army of gangsters.
After leaving Dogville, they had returned to Denver
only to find that the mice had been well and truly playing
while the cat was away,
and new forces had taken over their former possessions.
The result was a particularly unappealing retreat that had brought them
through the state of Alabama this spring
in search of new hunting grounds.
Now, they will not admit it,
but it's a fact.
Deep down inside, there isn't a woman alive
who doesn't nurture these fantasies...
whether they involve harems, being hunted through the jungle
by torch-bearing natives.
However much they go on and on about civilization and democracy,
sexy it ain't.
Grace and her father had resumed their legendary discord
even as they pulled out of Dogville,
and although Grace had been employing the technique
of letting things go in one ear and out the other
for a pretty long time now,
she was, to be frank, somewhat weary of her unbearably overweening daddy
who still believed any nagging woman could be pacified
with a good old bouquet of carnations.
I bet you wouldn't have had the guts to talk like that
if Mother had been alive.
No. You're right, my girl. I would not.
We're goins', boss.
Miss? Lady?
Can I talk to you?
Miss?
They gonna whip him. I knew they would.
It just ain't true; he ain't stole nothin'
They put that Rhenish wine from Mam's bedside table in his cabin
just to give 'em something to whip him for.
That's the law... one bottle and it's a whippin'
That's Mam's law.
What are you talking about? Who? Who are they gonna whip?
Timothy.
Why?
That's how they do us slaves.
- Slaves? - Yes, ma'am.
Surely you heard of slaves.
It's what we is at Manderlay.
This godforsaken place.
That's how I got out.
When a whippin's in the offin', they take out a section of the fence.
Listen, Grace, it's a local matter.
It's not for us to poke our noses in.
Why should we not poke our noses in
- just because it's a local matter? - It's certainly not our responsibility.
You think the Negroes wanted to leave their homes in Africa?
Wasn't it us who brought them to America?
We have done them a great wrong.
It's our abuse that has made them what they are.
Untie him.
Stop!
'Fraid not, lady.
Slavery was abolished 70 years ago.
If you won't obey that law of your own accord,
we will compel you to do so.
Help me get her inside.
Get water for Mam. Act quickly, Rose.
Spare me your hypocrisy.
You dumb old slave.
Get out!
Leave us alone.
If you're looking for sympathy, don't expect any from me.
Listen...
I'm very old...
...unfortunately dying.
I should like to ask you for a favor.
If it involves allowing you to go on exploiting these people like slaves,
I'm sorry, I'll just have to say no,
no matter how dying you are.
Slavery's over now. I can see that.
It had to come one day.
All right.
I'll probably refuse you, but you might as well ask.
There's a book under my mattress.
I should like you to retrieve it...
...and burn it for me.
- It would be best for everyone. - I'm sure you think so.
But it's my view that anything, no matter what,
is best served by being brought out into the open.
I beg you, one woman to another.
Woman to woman... makes no difference to me.
The sins of the past are sins I cannot and do not wish to help you erase.
Now I must leave you.
I believe my father's men have unlocked the gates.
Now everybody can come and go as they please.
Please let everyone else know on the plantation
that from now on, they can all enjoy the same freedoms
as any other citizen of this country.
The Constitution can be found at any courthouse.
And here's a tip for when you sue the family.
There's a weighty written evidence concealed in this very room.
She's dead.
The old devil.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean it, Missy.
No, no, if any of us deserves an apology, it's not me.
I'm afraid.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
We've taken all the family's weapons.
No.
I'm afraid of what will happen now.
I fear we ain't ready...
...for a completely new way of life.
At Manderlay,
we slaves took supper at 7:00.
When do people take supper when they're free?
We don't know these things.
Free men eat when they're hungry.
Free women as well.
Considering the times and the situation,
Grace's words in the dead woman's room
on mealtimes for free citizens might have seemed a trifle over-spirited.
We should not believe that there lay any content in these words
for the wretched and starving people of America.
Grace rejoined the gangsters
who had indeed concluded their disarmament
of the plantation's powers that had been,
though their findings were meager...
the shotgun and an old toy pistol.
All right, we can go.
Let's just wait a moment.
What are you waiting for?
For them to come and thank you?
Or for them to burn the whole place down
and dance some tribal dance on the ruins by the glow of the torchlight?
You are a bigot, Daddy, and you always have been.
We owe these people.
We brought them here, we abused them,
- we made them what they are. - I admit I don't do deals with the Japs.
Can't trust 'em when there's big money at stake.
But a bigot?
Well... why don't they come out?
That's exactly what you said last time.
Last time?
Remember when you were six?
You thought it was so sad that your beloved Tweety
was all shut up in a cage,
and nobody could persuade you not to let him out.
Tweety was a proud little bird.
Well, his dignified exit didn't do Tweety a hell of a lot of good.
We found him the next morning underneath your window,
- frozen to death. - I know!
He'd been bred as an indoor bird. He really didn't have a chance.
And what do you think those Negroes in there are?
How many generations do you think those families made their homes
behind that fence?
I bet you most of them have taken up employment
in their former jobs with the family, contracts and all.
Of course, now they'll get a few dollars for their efforts,
but they'll soon drink that up, and maybe they'll borrow a bit more
from their employers, who have, no doubt,
opened a little store full of colorful wares just for them.
And of course, they'll never be able to pay back the money,
and they'll be trapped yet again.
What you did was all very noble, my girl, but...
...when push comes to shove, you've just made everything far worse,
just as you did with Tweety.
So all we can do...
...is hope there's no frost.
What you said about contracts and loans...
- that's fraud. - Fraud.
See, I've read...
...that... - Yes?
...freed slaves are given a mule and a plot of land
so that they can establish themselves.
Yep, that's true.
But when it came down to it, the fella who owned the mule and the land
had rather keep it all for himself,
so nothing really ever happened with it.
Anyhow, it may take them a while to gather the evidence
against the plantation for when the family goes on trial.
Trial?
Tater-pie, there are times when you seem even less with it
than your dear mother.
Oh, I seem to have underestimated 'em.
We've at least one man with a genuine thirst for freedom,
and he's gettin' out, and he's in a hurry.
Yeah, he's hightailin' it, all right.
Yeah, that's Gramps.
- Pardon me. - Not a lot of dignity there.
He's scared out of his wits.
Would it be possible to have a word with the young lady?
Yes, yes.
Don't mean to inconvenience you.
That's exactly what you're doin'
You're not inconveniencing anyone.
This is a grave day for everyone, I know that.
I just thought we must've seemed a mite bit ungrateful.
We should like to thank you properly for what you've done.
It'll only take a moment.
- Yes, of course. - Ten minutes.
Then I'm gone. Not a second longer.
Grace was conducted through the wretched living quarters
bestowed upon the slaves with their pitiful leaky cabins.
Her actions would comprise an unconditional enrichment
of these people's lives.
There was no doubt about that.
Or was there?
Actually, Grace did not see much of the glow she had hoped for...
the glow that could've convinced her
that no one would end up like her little pale yellow canary.
These were human beings,
but of the kind on whom pain had been inflicted, Grace thought,
as she was suddenly interrupted by a strangely exotic accent.
When we were slaves,
we were not required to offer thanks for our supper,
and for the water we drink and the air we breathed.
Nobody needs to say thank you, but...
But what?
I mean, there is something we ought to be thankful for?
I didn't mean "but." I meant "and."
And...
There's no reason to be grateful for anything
as natural as your freedom.
I'm the first to apologize for everything...
...you and your people have been subjected to.
See, those gates should've been unlocked 70 years ago.
Only 70 years ago?
But before that, of course, they were completely justified.
No.
No, no, you misunderstand me.
What can I say?
You need say nothing at all.
We've heard of your kind.
You're a society lady who spends her time
rescuing wretched niggers.
I should like to say thank you.
Missy done give her time and effort to helpin' us.
Time I'll bet she could've spent on all kinds of different things.
'Cause was perfect justice when God made some of us slaves
and not others.
The nigra is vile by nature.
I know it ain't popular to say so,
and it ain't 'cause of Bert that I say so. Hmm.
No, Victoria did not base her perception
exclusively on her experience of her husband, though God knows,
it weighed heavily.
Bert was a useless eejit
whose character Victoria regrettably, so far in vain,
had done her best to improve by hitting him with any implement
at hand on any given occasion,
no matter how much he had threatened to take his own life
by throwing himself into Manderlay's deep well.
Grace looked at Wilhelm, the old house slave, and understood.
He had not brought her here for anybody to thank her.
He just wanted her to see them all...
the unfortunate flock that he very rightly feared
would have few chances beyond the perimeter fence.
Living proof of the devastating power of oppression.
- Listen up. - Yes, sir.
This has all been put on paper.
I just needed to check the wording first again
as these things are legal and binding.
Bingo.
- What are these? - Don't rightly know, ma'am.
They're the contracts, ma'am.
The family has been so considerate
to offer us all employment.
Grace was not a lawyer,
and unqualified to assess the validity of the contract
she held in her hand,
but she feared that, unfortunately,
any judge in the county would deem it fair and proper.
It appeared to Grace that instead of employee,
they might just as well have retained the old term of slave.
A body would only sign it
if he or she was utterly ignorant of life in liberal society,
or if he or she really had no choice.
Folks, I suppose that you're in urgent need of cash.
- Mark? - Cash?
I once knew this fella from a little township
nobody know the name of, so there ain't no grounds to mention
what it was called.
He had cash.
Not piles of it.
We are prepared to lend you some money
as covered by this other piece of paper,
and we can also set up a little store here, if you like.
After all, it's a long way to town.
And if you buy enough for all of us,
I bet you're liable to get a real nice bulk discount,
and the goods'll be cheaper than in town.
Ain't that right, Miss Grace?
I have no idea.
Please sign, everybody.
What this be? What it is?
All right.
Let's go.
Turn it off.
Damn it.
Daddy, you said that I didn't have the power to help Tweety.
You were right.
I was a child then.
So what is it this time?
This time, I have the power to act.
You said so back in Dogville,
that your power would be mine, too,
and that I could use it in my own way.
That power was to carry on the family farm.
That I was open to new ideas.
The power you ask for now will undoubtedly
be applied to something that's foolish at best...
Daddy, you promised.
Oh.
You were a bastard to Mother,
but when you promised her something, she got it.
Okay.
You've been given what I promised you.
Maybe things haven't been split right down the middle,
but this is as far as I'm prepared to go.
I want nothing to do with your plans.
And you won't be able to get in touch with me
if anything goes wrong and you need me, as usual,
to get you out of trouble, because fortunately, my dear,
you'll have no idea where I am.
- Daddy, I'd like to take Joseph as well. - No.
I need a lawyer to sort out some paperwork.
No. No! Never!
Never!
I'd never let Joseph go.
He's the only man I know who can draw up a contract
so there's only one possible interpretation,
and though I haven't needed that talent as of yet,
I still might need it one day.
I'll give you Viggo and Bruno for him.
Never.
I've given you my best associates, and you know it!
Daddy, I was meant to have been given half.
If Mother had been alive...
Oh, damn it, Grace!
So that very day, and into the early hours,
Joseph employed the celebrated unambiguous phrases
his previous employer had given him so wretchedly little opportunity
to practice.
New contracts needed drawing up,
and old ones needed nullifying...
all with the astonishing good will that parties always evince
in the company of rapid-firing machine pistols.
These were the deeds of gift.
You transfer the property to the former slaves in joint ownership.
The last document is your contract of employment
by this community.
Employment? I don't...
...quite get what you mean by that.
It'll be without pay,
and the right of termination is rather one-sidedly
in the hands of the employer, but nevertheless...
Manual labor...
for you and your family and Mr. Mays.
Hard labor.
Say something, Bingo.
My father's back ain't so strong.
He climbed up to reach the chandelier
one Christmas day, and he fell off the banister
and struck a table.
Well, that's what happens when you've got chandeliers.
When I consider that your understanding
of the worth of other human beings
has reached the desirable stage,
you and Mr. Mays and your family
will be allowed to go.
Go?
- And leave our home? - Yes.
And I assure you that even starting from scratch,
your prospects will be a lot better than your former labors
would have been.
With regards to the presence of me and my men,
we'll only act as your counselors.
The guns are merely a precaution in case of any threats
to the new community.
We intend to stay here,
but only until the first harvest is home,
after which, any of the new shareholders who wishes to do so
may cash in his or her deed of gift and receive a dividend.
All right, will you collect your deeds. Mark?
Nobody was particularly enthusiastic
or confident about these late-night legal formalities.
Victoria.
Flora.
But Grace could see beyond this,
and if she saw little else than fear and disquiet
in all these eyes,
at least she saw gratitude in one single pair...
namely, in Wilhelm's mild old gaze.
Bert.
Got a deed of gift here that ain't been accepted.
Will Mr. Bert approach forthwith and take delivery of his deed of gift?
Mr. Bert.
Mr. Berr?
Bert had actually prepared his escape
from his ferocious wife.
Despite her lack of faith in his abilities,
Bert had succeeded in meeting a woman
through the fence,
and she had agreed to help him to abscond.
And there he was, waiting at the agreed place
at the agreed time.
A helping hand, the woman had said.
What a peculiar coincidence that two women
should come to the aid of the Manderlay slaves
at the same time.
Grace and Bert's "helping hand."
And the similarities between them were also peculiar.
Young, beautiful, white, in male company.
Actually, male company in alarming numbers.
Where's the nigger?
Grace had moved into the freed plantation
among its new shareholders.
She was there as a guard, no more.
But no one could stop her from using this beautiful spring
to make her own little observations on the people of Manderlay
in the hope of spotting the burgeoning change in character
that freedom ought to bring.
But unfortunately, she saw little of just that.
She saw Victoria for the third time looking down the well
in hope of a glimpse of the body of Bert.
She saw Flora and Elizabeth swooning for Timothy as ever.
She saw the men spending their time on card games
playing for tufts of blue cotton under their leaky roof.
And she saw how everybody would ignore the eager Mark
whenever he opened his mouth, not knowing that he was notorious
for never being able to give an intelligible answer to anything.
Well, we called him Puddin' Head, but his real name wasn't Puddin' Head.
Grace saw Victoria beating her eldest son
for stealing a moldy cookie.
And she saw the unstoppable, irrevocable hierarchy of the beatings.
Victoria beating Ed,
Ed beating Milton and Milton, Willie,
who finally vented his frustration further down the food chain
on Claire,
who far too rarely managed to make use of the window
with the outside handle that her loving father Jack
had installed as an emergency entrance.
Which also allowed her to fall asleep every night to her favorite view
of the twinkling stars.
Every noontide, Grace witnessed with pity
how the former slaves were arrayed on the parade ground
with mysterious numbers and marks beneath Mam's balcony,
as if nothing at Manderlay had changed.
However, one of them did not submit
to this all-too-soothing power of habit.
Timothy, of course.
In a flash, his exotic pride almost took Grace's breath away.
This day, Grace walked on past the old peach house
where the whites were now detained,
put to work on sundry, more or less needless little repairs,
on her way to the barn housing her gangsters.
So how's everyone doing?
I'm afraid the men got nothing to do,
and it's not so good for the morale.
In situations like that, your father always came up with something.
I bet he did.
But it's patience that's required.
Not this much patience, Niels says.
Niels' grandpa was a cotton grower,
and he says the cotton should have been sown ages ago.
The soil doesn't look ready.
Might be because nobody's plowed it.
Maybe things are different here from where your grandpa lived.
No, ma'am. Don't reckon so.
Well, if... if it should've been sown,
surely the people here would be the first to know.
As she did not want to impose,
Grace's intercourse with the former slaves
had been limited to brief greetings and the like.
But now it was time for a talk with some meat to it.
Excuse me. Sir?
Mark? May I ask you something?
It's about planting the cotton.
I've been around for sowin' and harvestin'
and birth and death.
Right.
So when should the cotton be planted?
There's strict rules for that.
You can't mess around with that sort of thing.
Manderlay has always been renown for the precision of its harvest.
The swallows always migrate right afterwards.
They settle here for the night on their way across the marshes.
But the planting?
It's a science, my dear lady, and the weather,
which you might have expected, plays a fearsome role.
Yes, yes.
And when will it be time this year?
Not too soon and not too late.
Yes, but when?
Should the cotton have already been planted?
I'm not the sort of fella to pass on information
unless I'm damn sure of it.
Unless the facts of the matter are 100%.
In other words, the facts need be beyond dispute.
You know when to plant?
No.
I better ask Wilhelm. Is he in his cabin?
This mornin', he went down to the bathhouse.
He'd gotten a little frayed around the edges, as they say.
- It's a funny thing... - I'm sorry.
I'll go find him myself.
Excuse me, Wilhelm.
I've come about the fields.
The fields should've been plowed and harrowed three weeks ago,
and the cotton planted two weeks ago.
But does everybody know that?
Oh, yes. But I reckon they thinkin'
somebody else oughta go out in the field first.
In the old days, Overseer Mays
would've driven us out there.
Maybe it's because nobody really trusts you, Missy.
Yeah. But Wilhelm, they could be doing something else instead.
Repairs to their homes.
They badly need it.
The cabins have always been a sore spot.
But Mam said we ain't got no materials to fix 'em up.
But we're going to need what we make on the cotton.
How else will people survive on their own?
Yeah, if folks felt they was given somethin'...
something brought out by this, these new times...
...that made their lives better in a convincing way,
right here and now!
I don't know what that might be, but...
But we don't have time for that.
We've been forced to sow late before.
The harvest might be improved if we planted a bit late.
Even says that in Mam's Law.
Mam's Law?
Yes, Mam's Law.
It's all the rules for running the plantation.
But we weren't allowed to read it.
It was just for Mam and the family.
Only for Mam and the family, Grace thought.
Certainly no more.
And there on Mam's bed, skimming through the old book,
well-filled with bizarre and vicious regulations,
she came upon a page that looked strangely familiar.
A table with numbers from one to seven.
Somewhere Grace had seen something similar, for sure.
Mam's Law revealed it all.
The Manderlay plantation with its glamorous front mansion
and pitiful rear where the slaves had their quarters
had been kept in an iron grip by these very numbers.
They represented the psychological division of the Manderlay slaves.
Sammy was a Group 5: a Clownin' Nigger.
The formidable Victoria was of course a Number 4: a Hittin' Nigger.
No wonder her husband Bert had found it necessary
to accept "a helping hand"
even if it was another color from his own.
Wilma and Mark were Losin' Niggers.
Wilhelm was a 2: a Talkin' Nigger.
Flora was a Weepin' Nigger.
Et cetera et cetera.
There were Pleasin' Niggers and Crazy Niggers by the dozen.
The final category, Number 1: Proudy Niggers
consisted nowadays of Timothy, as expected,
who was of course not there.
And Elizabeth.
No. It said 7, not 1.
She was a Pleasin' Nigger, also known as a chameleon...
a person of the kind who could transform herself
into exactly the type the beholder wanted to see.
This was how the slave system had been kept alive for so long at Manderlay:
bondage, even through psychology.
As Grace, in deep thought, gazed across the fields of Manderlay,
she recalled another page in Mam's Law,
dealing exclusively with the weeding of the paths
in the romantic "Old Lady's Garden,"
the name of the narrow band of woodland that skirted the plantation.
"Trees and tree trunks," Grace thought.
So there were materials at Manderlay, after all.
Excuse me.
May I ask you all something?
Isn't it true that somebody who's even poor and colored...
...can still take the trouble to maintain their home?
How dare you?
You think colored folks prefer holes in their roofs and wallowing in mud?
Then all you need to do is to mend those holes.
But I told you.
There ain't never been no materials for that kind of thing at Manderlay.
No materials? That's not true.
When I'm in the fields, I see timber wherever I look,
just waiting to be turned into boards for a roof,
or an extension or maybe even a whole new cabin.
That be Mam's garden.
You can't cut that down.
Then why can't we cut down The Old Lady's Garden?
Have you really spent that many happy hours up there on your knees
weeding her romantic paths?
That's true. There's loads of timber.
We ain't seen it as anything but The Old Lady's Garden.
I don't know what you think,
but to me, it sounds like a splendid idea.
And at a stroke, these seated, reclining, resting people
had turned into people going full tilt...
walking, running, working people...
without anyone having to threaten them in the slightest
with "The Lady's Hand,"
as Grace had been told the great whip was called.
And Grace had won a kind of victory.
A small beginning of something that would one day erase
all the negative, inherited behavior patterns of Manderlay.
But as Grace had suspected,
the appetite for improving the living quarters
unfortunately exceeded that for preparing the fields.
A few of the former slaves had volunteered,
and with the white family and Grace herself,
they made up a sort of gang to prepare the soil for the seeds
under the gaze of a demonstratively hostile Timothy
with his mysterious white handkerchief.
- He wasn't born here? - He's a Munsi.
It's a line of African royalty. It's a very proud line.
He don't drink either,
or gamble like the others be doin' with their little blue tufts of cotton money.
It was Mam's Law.
We weren't allowed no real money.
Grace knew about the clever system of currency in Mam's Law.
Not real money that you could use in the outside world.
The Munsi don't gamble 'cause they don't believe in winnings.
They believe you have to be humble to your crops
and only take what's absolutely necessary.
I've never heard of these Munsi before,
but I do believe I once heard of the Mansi.
They different. They was slaves of African kings.
They gamble.
They is true mischief, Timothy say.
So Timothy has prejudices, as well.
What?
Oh, nothing. I was just thinking aloud.
So you find company, Flora.
No, no. I was on my way out, anyway.
Timothy?
Let me tell you one thing.
I know you don't like me and don't trust me,
and I can see why.
Although our ideals differ, you have a pride within you,
that I believe will one day be the salvation of everybody at Manderlay.
Let me tell you one thing, too.
You got fine words, a posse of gangsters, and your white skin...
somethin' folks here seem to fall for, but I ain't fooled.
You're not interested in us, not as human beings.
After all, it's tough telling people apart when they're from another race.
We whites have committed an irreparable crime
against an entire people.
Manderlay is a moral obligation,
because we made you.
Luckily, I'm just a nigger who don't understand such words.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've come here for the company of my girl,
and that ain't nothing for you to see.
Black hides meeting.
And if I were you, I would leave now before things get too nasty.
Grace regarded Timothy's hostility as a challenge,
and the very next day, she took a step to dispel his claim
that as a white, she was incapable of caring for blacks as individuals.
She'd had a chat with Venus about her somewhat maladjusted son Jim.
Venus had revealed that Jim's behavior
was merely that of a budding, but frustrated, artist.
Tell me, have you seen Venus?
Nobody here wants your charity.
I have something for Jim.
I've had a really good look at his face since our little chat,
and you're right.
It does possess an artist's sensitivity.
This is far too much.
No, no, no!
Go on, call him. These are for him.
Jim, come on out here with me and Miss Grace, baby.
These are for you, because we believe in you.
Now run along and paint your fantastic pictures.
Never mind those close-minded folks who think they know
what art is meant to look like.
Give them hell from me, Jim!
Excuse me, but I ain't Jim. I'm Jack.
That's Jim.
It is tricky.
As a matter of fact, I've never been able to tell them apart, either.
They're both colored, and they both got curly hair.
Why look any deeper than that?
To be honest, Grace had never been quite sure
which was Jim and which was Jack...
a blunder that would, in her former life among her fellow whites,
merely have occasioned a little laughter.
Thank you, ma'am.
In her life at Manderlay, it was disastrous.
But like her father, she did not take long to transform a defeat into anger,
energy and a counterattack.
This... this is what has created all this resistance.
Even you regard it as almost sacred, don't you?
I must admit it's played a right important part in my life.
That will be my next move.
They shall be allowed to see it...
...and understand that it can't do them any more harm.
I wouldn't advise it, Missy.
Presenting it to them would be like showing the child the rod
with which it's been beaten.
I agree it must be made public, but we ain't all ripe for it.
All right.
Then we shall have to see about ripening you, and quickly.
I'm not talking about the couple of cozy meetings I've organized
to which hardly anybody turned up.
I mean teaching with a timetable...
old-fashioned, hands-on schooling.
All right, I've got something for you to do at last.
It even involves bossing people about.
At noon tomorrow,
I'm going to give my first lesson to all of the former slaves of Manderlay.
It'll be your job to make sure they're there.
No excuse for not showing up.
And the family?
No, they're pretty well teaching themselves.
Are you listening to me?
It's 'cause Niels just got a great hand.
What?
Who are you?
My name is Dr. Hector.
Do excuse me a moment.
I'll have to pay my way out of this round.
God knows, I don't believe you possess any cards of real significance.
You have a poker player's face.
You can see here my entire enterprise.
I must say, I've never gained access to Manderlay before.
So when I drove by today and saw the gates were open,
I took it as a sign of new times.
What exactly do you do?
I entertain.
Party games, card games, and the like.
Well, nowadays, mainly the latter.
You play for money.
But I do more than play.
I cheat.
And you have no objections to revealing this... business secret of yours?
Oh, to some people, but not to you.
No, no, you see,
if you and I establish the business relationship I'm anticipating,
you'll be happy to know exactly what to expect.
And what can I expect?
Eighty percent.
You certainly know all the problems that arose
when our beloved New Deal was imposed in '65.
Plantation owners had plenty of land, but nobody to work it.
So they contracted with the former slaves.
But they just didn't have the same hold on the rascals
that they had in the old days.
Of course they lent them money.
But quite a few of the nigras actually saved up
and paid off their debts.
So the plantation owners got worried.
- I bet they did. - Oh, yeah.
That's where my idea came in.
I went from plantation to plantation
with the full backing of the plantation owners
to entertain their employees, and they were sorely in need of diversion,
let me tell ya.
We just had a little game of cards.
If anyone was close to repaying his debt,
I would take the shirt off their back.
And I am prepared to offer you that very same service today, ma'am.
You are not convinced.
Let me give you another token of my profound loyalty.
I have here a letter from a man by the name of Stanley.
He asked me to smuggle it out.
Thought perhaps you'd like to see it before it's mailed.
Listen, Mr. Hector...
Let me just say that I have never met a man
whom I have instantly despised
so wholeheartedly, both for his personality and his occupation.
Does that mean you're turning down my offer?
I never want to see you here again.
All right.
Well, I am disappointed.
I shall nevertheless bestow upon you my thought for the day.
I indulge in word games.
I like to give my clients something to laugh or think about when I leave.
The best technique for a card sharp...
...is dealing from the bottom.
Look as if you're dealing from the top of the deck...
...but instead you just take the bottom card... one that you know.
Taking from the bottom means something else entirely
in social terms.
But it is what I do. I take from the bottom.
It won't be hard to find me if you change your mind.
The letter was aimed at a Mr. Miller,
one of the truckers who picked up cotton from Manderlay,
and the plantation's only real contact with the outside world.
It was short and to the point:
"We are being held prisoner by gangsters and coloreds at Manderlay.
Inform the police and please come to our aid with all due dispatch."
Indignation is a rare emotion for a gangster,
but a state of just that was what Grace's men experienced
while they herded the colored people in for their lesson that day,
as Grace had reported on Dr. Hector's cheap trick of taking from the bottom.
It was hardly the sophisticated ambiguity of the term
that had affected them so dramatically.
Welcome to our lesson.
Yes, I call it a lesson, as the term "meeting"
seems to have scared some people out of attending.
I was comin', but I was late.
Very late.
You hadn't made it by the time we finished.
In the old days we could hear the bell from the old clock in the hall.
It was easy to keep up with time, but we never hear it no more.
Probably because nobody winds it up.
But now for the topic of this lesson: Working together.
Only four people from your wing helped to prepare the fields,
and only five helped to plant.
I'm not a shareholder in this enterprise,
but if I had been,
and if I'd also been one of the five, I would have felt cheated.
Democracy means government by the people.
But, as it's not practical for everyone to sit in Congress,
a method by which people may express their views is required.
This method is called a ballot. All right?
So, let's try it out.
We should choose a problem.
Anything anyone can't decide on?
If I may suggest a small matter...
Please do.
I reckon the little broken rake is mine, but Flora reckons it's hers.
- It's my rake! - That's an excellent suggestion.
It's a great example.
I assume you all know of this dispute and all feel able to have an opinion on it.
Who does the community think owns the rake?
It could turn out to belong to both parties equally.
That would correspond nicely with the subject of this lesson:
Working together, sharing together.
All right, so who thinks it's Elizabeth's rake?
Sammy?
I think... I think it's Elizabeth's rake.
All right, all right!
Slowly the point of Grace's edifying discourse dawned on the majority.
Most of them thought the rake was definitely Elizabeth's.
A few, that it was Flora's, and nobody, that it could be shared.
I still remain... undecided...
whether the rake is Elizabeth's or Flora's.
Right. So, not surprisingly, neither party receives Mark's vote.
From now on, the little broken rake belongs to Elizabeth.
That's what ballots are like; there are winners and there are losers.
But the community has spoken.
And now Grace embarked on a protracted explanation
of Flora's difficulties raking without a rake,
and that owning things together could have its advantages.
To make sure that everyone understood the democratic principle,
the meeting carried out another ballot at Jim's suggestion.
I wanna talk about the fact that Sammy be laughin' so loud
at his own jokes, and they ain't funny.
And I'm tryin' to get some sleep, and I can't get no sleep,
'cause he laughs so loud.
Mmmm.
Maybe perhaps there can be a time when he can stop his jokes
and stop laughin', so we can get some sleep.
You can't vote on a man's laughter.
You can't vote on a man's laughter, surely.
I'm hearing that it's at sundown.
At sundown.
That's what I'm hearing. So let's do a vote.
All right, so that's settled.
Yeah, it is. - It is.
That's democracy.
Finally Wilhelm proposed that it would be practical
if somebody was responsible for winding up the clock
with its small but penetrating chimes.
And for mysterious reasons,
the probing though fairly passive artist Jim was appointed,
despite the song and dance his mother kicked up.
He can't do it!
Grace wound up the lesson
by announcing that the topic for the next day would be:
Our anger and how to communicate it.
Maybe somebody would at least tell me what the time is.
Ask Timothy. He always know what time it is.
He tell by the sun. He always do that.
Or we can always ask Wilhelm.
He's so old, he's from before the clock ever got here.
So Wilhelm and Timothy each made his own suggestion
as to what the time was,
and they were astonishingly close.
Wilhelm thought it was eight minutes to.
Timothy thought it was five minutes to.
Grace rejoiced quietly at this natural ability they found so straightforward.
But rapidly two factions emerged,
one which insisted it was eight minutes to,
and the other would not hear of anything but five minutes to.
They were thus able to draw on the day's learning and put it to the vote.
The result was five minutes to, by a small majority.
And so it was decided:
The official time at Manderlay was five minutes to 2:00...
Five...
Grace's first lesson of the day took place in relative good humor.
But the second one...the one that had unfortunately proved unavoidable... -
was severer in character.
Read.
" Daily ration of food for slaves from Category..."
Oh. Oh, no. "1... is..."
"Six ounces of solid food."
And they've always been given just that,
no matter how little there was in the stores.
That's a lot less than Category 7, for example.
Why should a "Proudy Nigger" have less to eat
than an "Eye-Pleasin'" one?
How can the way your head seems to be arranged
have anything to do whatsoever with the amount people are given to eat?
I really don't know, either.
Not precisely.
Do you, Mr. Mays?
It could be just to punish them for their pride.
No, I just did what it said.
It mattered a lot to my mother that we follow these rules.
I know of many places where everybody got quite a bit less than six ounces,
and where they began to eat dirt.
It's a kind of custom coloreds have when food's scarce 'round here.
But it was forbidden under Mam's Law.
That's not what we're discussing here.
Don't you see what an affront it is, to divide people up like that?
Folks is different.
Oxen and rabbits don't need equal shares of fodder neither.
Both parties would come down with bellyaches.
Stop it! I'm not at all satisfied with what I've heard here today.
You're all speaking up for this foolishness.
I'm going to have to penalize you,
because so little effort has been made in these lessons.
That evening, Grace thought that her idea
of making the whites make up their faces,
which had seemed so just and edifying
in her flash of anger that afternoon,
was perhaps a tad too much in the wrong direction.
Even though Philomena herself in her own childhood
would not have dreamt of going to the toilet
without the entertainment of her black nanny.
Look at your Uncle Jim.
He's in the bathtub, learning how to swim.
Can we clean our faces now?
Yes. Yes, of course.
Well...
Here comes the dust.
Then none of this will matter anymore.
What do you mean?
There's gonna be a dust storm.
The plants have only just begun to grow.
It couldn't be worse.
But Manderlay's fields have never been harmed by a dust storm.
'Cause the windbreak was still in place.
Grace was not inclined to go into what the former overseer meant
by these mysterious words.
Soon she had convinced herself they had no meaning at all
apart from spreading disquiet and despondency.
The next day's lesson
on the importance of unleashing one's anger
met little understanding from the assembly.
It was when they wound up with a series of ballots
and the community had rapidly decided
to use Wilma's potatoes for seed
as she was so old and did not have to eat that much,
that they heard the wind.
Jack, where you goin'
He goin' to get Lucifer.
The dust had come at this time for as long as anybody could remember.
But every year from time immemorial,
it had spared the newly planted cotton
as the plantation had been cleverly shielded by a narrow band of trees
known in common parlance as "The Old Lady's Garden."
In the midst of the almost biblical darkness that descended on Manderlay,
Grace knew all too well
that even hand in hand with all the races of the world,
no army of gangsters could counter this:
Nature's extravagant demonstration of power.
All she could do was watch
as row upon row of the seedlings she had so welcomed
disappeared beneath the devastating dust.
Nobody could do a thing.
But apparently it did not mean that no one would try,
for now Grace discerned a rider out there.
He was riding like crazy.
As he progressed across the fields,
wherever he spotted a pile of dust beginning to grow,
he would break it up with his horse's hooves.
Whether it would make the slightest dent in the grand scale of things
was hard to tell, but it was a battle,
no matter how senseless it might be...
heroic and dangerous.
Timothy...
Come back!
Come back! Timothy!
- Timothy! - Timothy's gonna be all right!
He knows these storms.
Miss Grace, you's head over heels for him.
You's a fool, Miss Grace.
- Where'd you find him? - He was behind the house.
Is he alive?
I do believe I know what you mean by that question.
- But what does it mean, to be alive? - It means, is he breathing?
Forget it.
Is he dead?
We colored folks can be awfully hard to kill if we want it that way.
That very afternoon, strong Timothy was back on his feet
surveying the buildings for damage caused by the storm.
The dust had struck a devastating blow.
Unfortunately, hardest hit were the food stores
in the dilapidated Peach House which had lost its roof.
Almost all of their provisions were now inedible.
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