Another affecting sequence finds Ida Mae Cullen—the widow of poet Countee Cullen—exemplifying the triumph of Greaves’s method. In the same breath with which Cullen thanks “Bill” for documenting the party attendees together, she laments her husband’s achievements have not been adequately uplifted by others in the room. Activist Louise Thompson Patterson, too, interrupts the center circle of male attendees—who are seen sharing mixed opinions of activist and Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey—to remark that women of the movement, like lauded sculptor Augusta Savage, are being undersung.
Taking advantage of the multiple camera vantage points Greaves architected, editors Lynn True and Anna de Mara portray these disputes and recollections alike through an affecting split screen stitch. Viewers can see Ida Mae wag her finger as they watch the opposite perspective, a room full of her listening peers. Later, when Bearden criticizes Harvard professor Dr. Nathan Huggins’ landmark book Harlem Renaissance and its feeble exploration of the arts, we gain multiple points of view, witnessing both the bite of the aging artist and the sensitivity of the younger academic.
Coming after the party has settled down, these moments mark significant turning points in Once Upon a Time in Harlem—beyond the warm, early-evening embraces and punch-bowl reunions. While both women remain ever poised throughout, Cullen’s and Patterson’s critical outbursts similarly demonstrate Greaves’s method in action; both invoke the names of their Harlem Renaissance fellows absent from the gathering, some of whom have already passed, precisely because the camera is there, precisely because there is still time to negotiate who will cement their claim on the emotional real estate of the audience’s hearts and minds once the credits roll.