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"It's hard to view a corpse and turn your head"--the Rev. Al Sharpton discussing the funeral of Emmett Till

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till is a new documentary that attempts to correct that oversight. Directed by Keith Beauchamp, the film is a standard combination of talking heads and archival footage. But instead of relying on historians and African-American figures, Beauchamp has tracked down relatives and friends of Emmett. This gives the documentary a warmer, less "historical" feel. Unlike last year's "60 Minutes" piece, in which the camera focused more on tv commentator Ed Bradley than the people he was interviewing, Beauchamp makes the wise decision to stay out of the picture and let his subjects speak for themselves. We see Emmett's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, reminisce about her son's perfect teeth. We hear his cousin talk about what a prankster Emmett was. And we hear various acquaintances talk about Mississippi in 1955.

For younger audiences, this discussion of the Deep South during the Jim Crow era will be eye-opening. It was eye-opening at the time even for Northern blacks. One of Emmett's cousins from Chicago remembers, "They always prepped you for going to Mississippi." You had to be told what you could and couldn't do, what you could and couldn't say. One thing you definitely couldn't do was whistle at a white woman, which is what Emmett did one day in August 1955. A few days later, in the middle of the night, the woman's husband and brother-in-law, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, showed up at the house of Mose Wright, Emmett's great-uncle, and took Emmett away. His horribly disfigured body was dragged out of the river three days after. The only way Wright could identify his nephew was by a ring on his finger.

The Emmett Till case became a turning point in the civil rights movement through the tireless efforts of Mamie Till Mobley. She insisted on bringing Emmett's body back to Chicago (the Mississippi sheriff wanted him buried immediately) and having an open casket. As the documentary's archival footage shows, the funeral was a huge event in Chicago. And when pictures of Emmett's tortured face were printed in Jet magazine, it became a national story.

Even bigger, though, was the trial of Bryant and Milam, which attracted white as well as black media attention. Beauchamp effortlessly mixes news reports from the time with post-trial interviews with Mose Wright and contemporary interviews with other witnesses. Watching the footage and especially Mose Wright's heroic testimony in the face of legitimate death threats, it's hard not to think about the trial in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published seven years later.

The film loses focus, however, when it shifts its attention to the present day. Beauchamp has made no secret of his desire to see some kind of justice for Emmett and his mom, who passed away a couple years ago. And the movie's title The Untold Story and a few interview snippets indicate that there might be something new to report. Even though Bryant and Milam are dead, maybe other accomplices, still living, could be indicted. But the film, for better or worse, has nothing to show on this matter, so it makes the unfortunate decision to film black members of the New York city council grandstanding in the council chambers. That the movie basically ends with this footage is an unfortunate (and unintentional) commentary on the relative ineffectiveness of much of today's black establishment.

Still, though there might not be much to the "Untold" part of Emmett Till's story, the story itself is gripping and one worth repeating. It opens this Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center for a one-week run.  

J. Robert Parks