About Author: Hilton Als

This season, the black story line on “Boardwalk Empire,” does something so extraordinary I didn’t think it was possible–certainly not on television, or in film: it presents an entirely authentic nineteen-twenties Negro world, part Harlem Renaissance perversity, and part “Macbeth,” all without sacrificing style. In Peter Biskind’s recent book “Conversations With Orson Welles,” the late auteur despaired of different time periods like the nineteen-twenties ever being done properly in film, saying–quite accurately–that if a fifties film does the twenties, it looks like the twenties in the nineteen-fifties. The production values on “Boardwalk Empire,” are as impeccable as the twenties look in various photographs and films, but none of it looks nostalgic; we’re watching a highly stylized documentary set in the past. But for a long time there was nothing I would recommend about Albert “Chalky” White (Michael Kenneth Williams), who was the ostensible black star of the first few seasons. An illiterate racketeer, Williams’ performance as White was so bad–and remains terrible–that I just waited for whatever he did to get done so I could get back to the other characters, their various affairs and excellent clothing. The problem with Williams’ work–he’s the only drag on the show–is in his mouth. Nearly frozen in a permanent sneer, he looks out at us through a mask of what he thinks an angry black man is supposed to look as opposed to how his character, another immigrant who’s “made it,” might feel if threatened, or made vulnerable by love. Jeffrey Wright has come to save him. As an ersatz Dubois/Father Divine, Wright is so complex and brilliant and real–so sexy in his nefarious “proper” behavior–that he makes Williams bearable in their scenes together, and forgettable when their scenes are through. Wright slowly winds his way through the streets of Harlem and New Jersey in a beautiful overcoat, like a snake who’s alluring skin seduces its victims into believing they will not be dead if he trusts them. With Wright, the story line grows more complex, akin to those moments in Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” when Franz put on his dead lovers clothes. And there’s a colored lady that these various men circle around, of course, played by Margot Bingham. Her body–fleshy, languid, true to the layers of untruths she must tell to survive–is the added note of reality that “Boardwalk Empire,” had to have if it was going to make blackness real for its viewers, it’s story, and what a relief it is that they didn’t settle for Williams’ sneer dressed up in checkered suits, the same old story of rage in a fedora.