American film, mirroring the stratifications of American society, evolved to distort the sexuality of black men and women, either neutering it entirely or grotesquely overstating it. In this sense, “Something Good” reveals a secret, alternative cinematic history.
The scholar Allyson Nadia Field, who is doing the heroic work of studying the silent era of black film, dates the work to 1898, suggesting that it was intended as a remake of Thomas Edison’s “The Kiss,” which is believed to depict the very first kiss on film. A lost pair of lovers were recently rediscovered in a thirty-second silent film titled “ Something Good – Negro Kiss.” The footage, which has been newly added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, shows a series of embraces between two black performers, Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown.
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