Meeting the Man: It is 1970. An enterprising and seemingly obnoxious and entitled white-liberal director wants to chronicle Jimmy’s life in France, starting with shots along the Seine. Jimmy throws a tantrum and insinuates he’s being exploited and asked to play some maudlin theory of who he is rather than document the true preoccupations of his daily life in Paris. Next thing we know he’s seated at a café in what seems to be the Algerian quarter of Paris discussing love and negritude. Heard offscreen, the director says, Everybody’s been in love, and Jimmy protests, telling him to look at the world and be honest. If everyone had been in love at one point or another, modern life would not play out as it does; people would treat one another as sacred, whereas now they behave like even they themselves are disposable. It seems the director had wanted Jimmy to walk aimlessly around France like he had in the Alps years back, but Jimmy wanted to be surrounded by friends and kin this time round, to argue with someone other than himself and the fictional characters of his novels.
The subject of renewed attention a few years ago, this work went from shocking on first viewing to grotesquely assimilated in excerpts, so that the bridge between Baldwin’s irreverence and his warmth is never crossed by most who encounter parts of the film stripped of context. Nonetheless, in many ways this is the best and most coherent record we have of Jimmy on film, because it depicts him wanting both to be seen and to self-direct how he is seen, until ultimately he’s obscured yet again by the force of his own charisma and becomes an idol on the screen, or a misfit, or someone who worries he’ll be a relic soon if he doesn’t keep the correct company. He’s already being accused of moderation or relative docility compared with such figures as Malcolm X. He defers to a younger generation perhaps because he’s trying to learn how to be more like them and more like himself simultaneously. That he won’t tell the congregation what to do next as he had in both previous documentaries is the director’s complaint—and Baldwin’s triumph.