Malcolm X (1992) on Netflix
PG-1319923h 22mBiographyDramaHistory
Malcolm Little's father is killed, and his dream of becoming a lawyer is discouraged because of his skin color. In Harlem he and the gangster West Indian Archie co-operate a numbers racket.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.7/10112,518 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Omaha, a party of Klansmen surrounds the house where the Little family lives and breaks its windows shortly before Malcolm is born. His father, a campaigner for black rights, is killed and the death is recorded as a suicide, and the children are put into protective care. Malcolm does well in school and dreams of becoming a lawyer, but a teacher discourages the idea because of his skin color. During World War II he lives in Boston, where he begins a relationship with the white Sophia. He travels with her to Harlem and meets West Indian Archie, who runs a numbers game in the neighborhood; the two become partners in the illegal racket. When Archie denies him a large sum over a winning number, the conflict sends Malcolm back to Boston.
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Malcolm X (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film became the first non-documentary and first American production ever given permission to film in Mecca; because non-Muslims like director Spike Lee were barred from entering the city, a second unit crew had to shoot those scenes without him.
- The film was saved by the financial intervention of prominent black Americans, some of whom appear in it: Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Janet Jackson, Prince, Tracy Chapman and Peggy Cooper Cafritz.
- Producer Marvin Worth, who acquired the rights to The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1967, had met Malcolm X long before, when he was a teenager called "Detroit Red" selling drugs in New York City and Worth was fifteen and spending time around the jazz clubs in the area.
- A protest erupted over the fact that a white director was slated to make the film, and Spike Lee was one of the main voices of criticism; since college he had considered a film adaptation of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to be a dream project.
- Nelson Mandela, who appears in the film delivering a quote from Malcolm X, actually refused to say the line out loud during filming because he feared South Africa's apartheid government would use his words against him; the film instead closes on archival black-and-white footage of Malcolm X speaking the line himself.
- Baldwin developed his screenplay work into the 1972 book One Day, When I Was Lost, and wrote in 1976 that he would rather be horsewhipped, or incarcerated in the forthright bedlam of Bellevue, than repeat the adventure; he died in 1987.
- Once Warner Bros. agreed to the project they initially wanted Norman Jewison, director of the seminal civil rights film In the Heat of the Night, to direct; Jewison was able to bring Denzel Washington into the project to play Malcolm X, the two having worked together on A Soldier's Story.
- One month before the film was released, Lee asked that media outlets send black journalists to interview him, and the request proved controversial: celebrities commonly picked sympathetic interviewers, but it was the first time in many years in which race had been used as a qualification.
