Body and Soul (1925) review

After escaping from prison, Isaiah T. Jenkins (Paul Robeson, in his debut) poses as a preacher and steals donations from his parishioners - he's also infatuated with Isabelle (Julia Theresa Russell), which her Mother supports, but she believes he's a predator and runs away.  Despite its historical value as one of the features from Micheaux, the first African-American filmmaker and a pioneer in the medium (it's even written on his gravestone!), I'm afraid to say that much of this (unintentionally?) plays into basically all of the racist stereotypes about members of the black community ... and many of the intertitles are in AAVE, which makes them hard to read and understand (keep the pause button handy).  After an hour and change of questionable material, it then does the worst cop-out of all, revealing "it was just a bad dream" - there was no evil Reverend, Robeson's actually an inventor, and Momma has the money to make everything right.  Uh, no....