Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Genre | Drama |
Screenplay by | Christopher Lofton |
Directed by | James Keach |
Starring | Jane Seymour Keith Carradine James Keach |
Theme music composer | Charles Bernstein |
Country of origin | United States Canada |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Cinematography | Roland Smith [1] |
Editor | Heidi Scharfe |
Running time | 115 mins [2] |
Production companies | Catfish Productions Hallmark Entertainment Distribution Company [3] |
Original release | |
Network | Showtime |
Release | April 23, 2000 |
Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble is a 2000 American television film starring Jane Seymour and directed by James Keach. It depicts the life of British actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, who sees first-hand the horrors of slavery when she marries an American plantation owner. Her published diaries in the form of personal accounts are shown to influence the British government's decision to withhold support of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Keith Carradine co-stars as Fanny's husband Pierce Butler, with Keach, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Colin Fox also appearing.
It first aired on the American television network Showtime on April 23, 2000. Enslavement received generally negative reviews; critics focused on the paucity of historical accuracy as well as its lack of subtlety. Composer Charles Bernstein earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for "Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie, or a Special".
Set in the nineteenth-century, the film depicts the real-life story of British actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble. When Kemble leaves her successful acting career to marry American lawyer and slave owner Pierce Butler, she becomes horrified by the treatment of the enslaved people. Her efforts to improve the lives of her husband's slaves result in their eventual divorce and the loss of access to her two daughters. Fanny later publishes her journals and their first-hand accounts of slavery, helping influence the British government's decision to withhold support of the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
In 2000, it was reported that Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman actress Jane Seymour and her husband James Keach would be co-starring and co-producing a television film about the life of real-life abolitionist Fanny Kemble. [4] Seymour had not heard of Fanny Kemble before being approached for the project, though she was aware of the Kembles for being "a very famous [acting] family." [5] She and Keach researched Fanny's life and found that "there was very little research to be found in America, but tons of it in England and Canada." [5] As a result, they felt that Kemble's life story would provide a different perspective of the historical period in the US. Seymour and Keach hired Christopher Lofton to write the film, and the three worked for five years before it was made. [5] Seymour believed that the delay in securing financing stemmed partly from two factors: companies were wary of the cost associated with period dramas as well as the lack of familiarity Americans had with Kemble's life. [6]
One of their goals was to depict several different types of enslavement. [5] [6] Seymour described her character as "a strong, willful woman [who] fought against being enslaved by the man she fell in love with and married. When she saw slavery on his plantation, she fought against that, too." [7] Actor Keith Carradine, one of Keach's good friends, was cast as Fanny's husband. [8] Keach also directed, yet another such collaboration between him and his wife. [6] The film was shot mostly in Canada. [9]
On April 23, 2000, Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble premiered on the American television network Showtime. [9] It received generally negative reviews from film and television critics. TV Guide 's Robert Pardi critiqued Seymour's performance for "lack[ing] the emotional depth that might have transformed the fustian presentation of this material. Instead of giving a nuanced performance, Seymour seems content to impress viewers with her poised demeanor as she sullies her hoopskirts in the cause of freedom." [10] David Kronke of the Los Angeles Daily News criticized Enslavement for lacking subtlety and opined that it "can't decide whether it's a story about race or just a standard-issue bodice-ripper." [11] Writing for the New York Daily News , David Bianculli blamed the screenwriter for the film's faults, explaining that "Lofton writes dialogue that sounds like unvarnished tracts from an 'author's message' manifesto – and in Seymour's Kemble, he has created a character so noble and modern-thinking she makes Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman look like a backwoods savage." [12] Tom Jicha of the Sun-Sentinel faulted the film for being riddled with "cliched scenes of plantation atrocities" that "frequently cross the line between realism and titillation," such as an early scene in which a black couple are attacked for having sex. [13]
The historical accuracy of the film has also been a source for complaint. In his book Echoes of War: A Thousand Years of Military History in Popular Culture, Michael C. C. Adams cited Enslavement as an example of a movie that claims historical accuracy while "gratuitously and radically distorting" the truth. [14] The Seattle Times negatively reviewed the film for "exaggerating and sensationalizing" Kemble's life, [9] while Michael Kilian of the Chicago Tribune criticized the portrayal of John Quincy Adams as a racist. Kilian did however commend it for depicting the "horrors of slave life on a sea island plantation [as] every bit as compelling as those contained in the journal Kemble kept and later published in England during the Civil War – a book that helped turn British public opinion against recognition of the South." [15]
Despite its negative reception, the film received several nominations. Composer Charles Bernstein earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie, or a Special. [16] The Art Directors Guild gave a nomination for Excellence in Production Design for a Television Movie or Mini-Series to production designer Eric Fraser and art director Astra Burka. [17] Akinnuoye-Agbaje received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Network/Cable at the 2001 Black Reel Awards. [18]
Jane Seymour is a British actress. After making her screen debut as an uncredited extra in the 1969 musical comedy Oh! What a Lovely War, Seymour moved to roles in film and television, including a leading role in the television series The Onedin Line (1972–1973) and the role of psychic Bond girl Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973).
Harriet Jacobs was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".
Frances Anne Kemble was a British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-19th century. She was a well-known and popular writer and abolitionist whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing, and works about the theatre.
Pierce Butler was an Irish-born American politician who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in the Kingdom of Ireland, Butler emigrated to the British North American colonies, where he fought in the American Revolutionary War. After the war, he served as a state legislator and was a member of the Congress of the Confederation. In 1787, he served as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where Butler signed the Constitution of the United States; he was also a member of the United States Senate.
Barbara Lynn Herzstein, better known as Barbara Hershey, is an American actress. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema in several genres, including westerns and comedies. She began acting at age 17 in 1965 but did not achieve widespread critical acclaim until the 1980s. By that time, the Chicago Tribune referred to her as "one of America's finest actresses".
Ellen Craft (1826–1891) and William Craft were American abolitionists who were born into slavery in Macon, Georgia. They escaped to the Northern United States in December 1848 by traveling by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Ellen crossed the boundaries of race, class, and gender by passing as a white planter with William posing as her servant. Their escape was widely publicized, making them among the most famous fugitive slaves in the United States. Abolitionists featured them in public lectures to gain support in the struggle to end the institution.
The tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person, who is assumed to be depressed, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit into the "white world" or the "black world". As such, the "tragic mulatto" is depicted as the victim of the society that is divided by race, where there is no place for one who is neither completely "black" nor "white".
The Long Riders is a 1980 American Biographical- Western film directed by Walter Hill. It was produced by James Keach, Stacy Keach and Tim Zinnemann and featured an original soundtrack by Ry Cooder. Cooder won the Best Music award in 1980 from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for this soundtrack. The film was entered into the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is a British actor known for his roles as Simon Adebisi in Oz, Mr. Eko in Lost, Lock-Nah in The Mummy Returns, Nykwana Wombosi in The Bourne Identity, Heavy Duty in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Kurse in Thor: The Dark World, Killer Croc in Suicide Squad, Malko in the fifth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones, Dave Duerson in the NFL biopic drama Concussion, and Ogunwe in His Dark Materials.
Mr. Eko is a fictional character, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje on the ABC television series Lost. He is introduced in the second season episode "Adrift" as one of the plane-crash survivors from the plane's tail section. Flashbacks reveal that he became the leader of a gang of guerrillas to save his brother when he still lived in Nigeria. He assumed his brother's identity and became a priest after his brother was killed in a botched drug smuggle; Eko killed two guerrillas in defense, was ostracized, and left Nigeria to become a priest in Australia. After investigating the alleged miracle of a girl who came back to life after drowning in Australia in 2004, Eko boarded Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. This plane crashed and left Eko, along with a few other survivors, on a deserted island.
Roswell King was an American businessman, planter, slave owner, and industrialist. Together with his son, Barrington King, he founded Roswell Manufacturing Company in the Georgia Piedmont, establishing a cotton mill and industrial complex. They co-founded the town of Roswell, Georgia, inviting friends to be part of its and the mill's development in the 1830s. Roswell's family originally hailed from Delaware but later moved to Connecticut where they were among the first residents of New Haven and later Windsor. As a teen, Roswell participated in the American Revolutionary War as part of the naval resistance before moving to Georgia's low country.
Mansfield Park is a 1999 British romantic comedy-drama film based on Jane Austen's 1814 novel of the same name, written and directed by Patricia Rozema. The film departs from the original novel in several respects. For example, the life of Jane Austen is incorporated into the film, as are the issues of slavery and West Indian plantations. The majority of the film was filmed on location at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire.
The New Swiss Family Robinson is a 1999 American adventure film directed by Stewart Raffill. The film is based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, and stars Jane Seymour, David Carradine, James Keach, John Mallory Asher, Blake Bashoff, and Jamie Renée Smith.
Linc's is an American comedy-drama sitcom created by Tim Reid and Susan Fales-Hill. The series starred Steven Williams, Pam Grier and Golden Brooks, and was set in a bar in Washington, D.C. It aired on Showtime for two seasons from August 1998 to February 2000. After its cancellation, it was briefly syndicated on Showtime's sister network BET.
Martha "Mattie" Griffith Browne was an anti-slavery novelist and American suffragist.
Damson Alade-Bo Idris is an English actor. He is best known for starring on John Singleton's crime drama Snowfall, which debuted 5 July 2017 on FX and ended in 2023 after six seasons. He played the co-lead in Netflix's 2021 sci-fi action film Outside the Wire.
Butler Island is a 1,600-acre (647.5-hectare) island in the Altamaha River in McIntosh County, Georgia, United States. Part of the Altamaha River Delta, the island is located 1 mi (1.6 km) south-southeast of Darien, Georgia.
Paul Taublieb is an American director, writer, and producer best known for films such as The Vow and the Emmy Award-winning documentaries "Unchained: The Untold Story of Freestyle MotoCross" and "Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau".
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 is an account by Fanny Kemble of the time spent on her husband's plantation in Butler Island, Georgia. The account was not published until 1863, after her marriage had ended and the American Civil War had begun. According to PBS, she decided to publish it then "in response to England's hostility toward the North and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation."