The Harvard-educated Wexler—author of such significant cultural provocations as Joe (1970), Serpico (1973), and Saturday Night Fever (1977) — counts as a key figure in the decade’s films, and had already been arrested in 1972 when the FBI learned that he was planning to assassinate President Nixon.
Along with incidental changes to the book (altering the ending and excising characters, such as a masochistic boy slave who begs Hammond to beat him) and additions (the honeymoon in New Orleans, the public fight scenes at the brothel), Wexler crucially introduced the growing consciousness of rebellion among the slaves. No halos hover over these believably realistic blacks of their time and circumstances, never portrayed as martyrs but people enduring what they must to stay alive in the grip of economic terrorism.
