James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket

This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series The Devil Finds Work: James Baldwin’s Cinema of the Mind.

In-person: Live dramatic reading of an excerpt of The Devil Finds Work (1976).

This bold, poetic visual essay channels James Baldwin’s final book proposal, Remember This House, and draws from The Devil Finds Work (1976) to examine how cinema shapes racial consciousness. Narrator Samuel L. Jackson voice-acts as Baldwin, molding his reflections on Hollywood and his friendships with civil rights movement martyrs—Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X—into a “life-altering” film (New York Times). It remains a timeless portrait of Baldwin’s enduring clarity, rage and moral vision on race and representation in America. 

DCP, b&w, color. Director: Raoul Peck. Screenwriters: James Baldwin, Raoul Peck. With: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin.

This pre-Code prison drama, based on Warden Lewis Lawes’ memoir, follows a prisoner (Spencer Tracy) who finds dignity behind bars and comfort in his girlfriend’s embrace (Bette Davis). Shot at the actual Sing Sing prison, it blends realism with melodrama to critique the penal system. Marked by his father’s cruelty as a boy—“the ugliest boy he had ever seen”—Baldwin found validation in Davis’ “pop-eyes popping” and recalled this as the first film that “shook” him. 

DCP, b&w. Director: Michael Curtiz. Screenwriters: Wilson Mizner, Brown Holmes. With: Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Louis Calhern.

Fritz Lang’s noir-tinged crime romance stars Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney as doomed lovers caught in a cruel cycle of fate and injustice. Mixing German Expressionism with American fatalism, Lang’s film critiques the criminal justice system and the myth of second chances. For Baldwin, this was a foundational viewing—one that mapped his early cinematic imagination with themes of persecution, identity and moral ambiguity that would echo throughout his later writings. 

DCP, b&w. Director: Fritz Lang. Screenwriters: Gene Towne, Charles Graham Baker. With: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane.

This Cold War melodrama follows a devout Catholic couple who come to suspect their intellectual son is a Communist spy. As political paranoia fractures the family, Helen Hayes delivers a haunting performance as a mother torn between faith, patriotism, and maternal love. The film left a deep impression on James Baldwin—he writes, “And I will never forget it”—who recalled seeing it during a time of profound personal isolation. 

DCP, b&w. Director: Leo McCarey. Screenwriters: Leo McCarey, John Lee Mahin. With: Helen Hayes, Robert Walker, Dean Jagger.

This documentary captures the mind, voice and presence of one of America’s most vital writers. Beginning and ending with his funeral, the film traces James Baldwin’s journey from a turbulent Harlem childhood—brought to life through striking re-enactments—to his years abroad in France, Turkey and Switzerland. Blending interviews, archival footage and Baldwin’s electrifying oratory, it offers more than biography: it’s a visceral encounter with a singular intellectual and moral force. Restored from the original 16mm negatives. 

DCP, b&w, color, 87 min. Director: Karen Thorsen. Screenwriters: Karen Thorsen, Douglas K. Dempsey. With: James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, David Baldwin, William Styron.