A PATCH OF BLUE - CRITERION CHANNEL

This piece was originally written as part of a review of the boxed set The Sidney Poitier Collection back in 2009.

Sidney Poitier stars in A Patch of Blue, a different kind of love story, playing career man Gordon Ralfe. One day meets, Gordon a blind girl, Selina (Elizabeth Hartman, Walking Tall), in the park. After sharing a conversation with her, he realizes that she has not been educated to get along on her own. In fact, as he will ultimately discover, she lives with her alcoholic grandfather (Wallace Ford, in his last role) and her equally drunk mother, Roseanne (Shelley Winters, who won her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work). Despite the fact that Roseanne was the one who blinded her daughter, she holds the girl's condition against her and makes Selina work like a slave around the house. Until recently, when Selina started convincing her kindly boss (John Qualen) and her grandfather to take her to the park, the blind girl had barely been beyond her apartment. She has no idea how the world works for seeing people, much less for the sightless.

Selina also has no idea that Gordon is African American. Her only encounter with anyone of a different race was a young girl who lived in her building whom Roseanne forbad her to play with, though it was never explained to her why. Thus, amongst the many things that are beyond her, Selina has no concept of race or racism. Gordon, on the other hand, is far too aware of the judgmental glances he and the white girl receive when they are together. Even his brother (Ivan Dixon) raises concern at seeing the two hanging out, seeing only trouble for Gordon. Gordon does his best to keep his feelings in check, extending an honest helping hand to his new friend, but Selina falls for him immediately. She has never been shown kindness, it's only natural.

A Patch of Blue was written and directed by Guy Green, adapting a novel by Elizabeth Kata, and though the movie has strains of melodrama, Green also balances that with a tough realism. Selina's squalid existence is full of cruelty and hatred, and the director does his level best to show what production standards at the time would allow. He even pushed the boundaries of those standards by filming an interracial kiss shared by Poitier and Hartman. Though these scenes were excised from a lot of prints at the time, particularly in more racially divided areas of the U.S., A Patch of Blue is intact on modern home video releases.

The film manages to avoid getting too sappy, as Gordon keeps his head and makes the right choices for Selina, no matter how hard or bittersweet they may be. First-time actress Elizabeth Hartman rightly earned accolades for her portrayal of the blind girl. She is so convincing that I actually had to double-check that she wasn't blind in real life. Selina is an innocent in a harsh world, never entirely aware of the horrible things that have happened to her. Beyond the issues of race, Green seems to be indicting society more for its lack of compassion. How could Selina get through so much of her life without anyone ever extending a hand to aid her? The contrast between the world outside the apartment and inside is practically Dickensian, creating a sharp divide between the exploitative family relationship and the gentility of Gordon's care. The world outside the four walls of the apartment may still have its problems, but at least there is a possibility to advance.

A WARM DECEMBER - CRITERION CHANNEL

This piece was originally written as part of a review of the boxed set The Sidney Poitier Collection back in 2009.

Sidney Poitier pulls double-duty for the 1973 clunker A Warm December, and I'm sorry to say it does nothing for his reputation as an actor or as a director.

When Dr. Matt Younger (Poitier) takes his daughter to London, he only hopes to get in a little dirt bike racing (yes, he races dirt bikes, and no, he's not twelve), but instead he becomes embroiled in what looks like a plot of international intrigue when the alluring Catherine (Esther Anderson) uses him as cover when men following her get too close. Catherine is an African dignitary, but her predicament is not a political one, it's medical. The espionage stuff is a feint, and after the pair have fallen in love, the script takes a different turn. Writer Lawrence Younger (A Kiss Before Dying) has crafted all of this hullabaloo about a pursuit so that we won't realize Catherine has a terminal illness until Matt has lost his heart to her completely. The back half of the film is a schmaltzy cram-in-as-much-romance-before-time-runs-out snoozer. Adding to the melodramatic wrinkles is Matt's status as a doctor (also a secret during the first act), so that he can agonize even more over the woman he can't cure.

Poitier's direction is completely lacking in style, and for an actor, it's surprising how little eye he seems to have for his cast's performances. Anderson is a nondescript love interest, almost completely lacking in the required mystery or charisma. This looks more like a TV movie than a big-screen effort.

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review as originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2008 in a piece covering the Stanley Kramer Film Collection boxed set.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner endures because some 50 years on as a smart and daring movie that is about ideas as much as it is about family drama; yet, it avoids being overzealous in its message by weaving the debate through a very real narrative. Director/producer Stanley Kramer and writer William Rose put their words in the mouths of three-dimensional characters and let their communication drive the story.

The premise of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is that a young couple are coming home from the Hawaiian vacation where they met to tell her parents that they are getting married. The catch is that the girl, Joanna (Katharine Houghton), is white and the man, Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier), is black. In 1967, this would be quite a shock for any parents, including Joanna's notoriously liberal ones. Played by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, much of the pathos of the movie rides on their shoulders. It's their reactions that are going to make the philosophy and ethics of the scenario seem real. It's easy to believe two young people are in love, it's a whole other thing to see the people around them be daring enough to encourage their daring. This is where Kramer and Rose get it right, by not letting these characters be completely correct or make all of the proper decisions. Ideas are ideas, but until they are challenged, we don't know how firmly we believe them. Over the single night that John and Joanna have before he has to fly on to Geneva, everyone the couple encounters--including other African Americans--will have to ask themselves exactly how they feel.

For my money, Spencer Tracy is the man to watch here. I've always liked him, and in his final film role, the 67-year-old actor is just as fierce an orator as he always was (including in the Kramer-directed Inherit the Wind, a personal favorite of mine). The climax of the film hinges on a final, stirring monologue from Tracy, and despite his poor health, the legend still has all of his faculties. It's a moving speech, full of righteous fire. They just don't make them like Spencer Tracy anymore, do they?

Funnily enough, for all of the progressive social issues, the parts of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner that now feel hilariously dated are the representations of the generation gap. Dig that crazy rock 'n' roll, daddy-o!

PARIS BLUES - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2014.

Martin Ritt's 1961 jazz-infused drama Paris Blues is one of those films that, once you've seen it, you're kind of shocked that people don't talk about it more. A joint vehicle for Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman, Paris Blues is a Kazan-like social narrative that juxtaposes new Hollywood method with old Hollywood romanticism and somehow let's both win without compromising either.

Newman stars as Ram Bowen, a trumpet player with a moody demeanor worthy of his groaning pun of a name (say it out loud and then say, "Rimbaud"). He is the toast of Paris' side-street jazz scene, blowing nightly with his band, working alongside his cohort and musical arranger, Eddie Cook (Poitier). Eddie is practical and level-headed, a smooth balance to Ram's jagged edges. The ex-pat Americans have a good thing going in France. Ram even has a no-strings love affair with a chanteuse (Barbara Laage) who doesn't mind feeding him after gigs.

Yet, the boys have ambition, too. Ram is working on a magnum opus, his "Paris Blues," and he hopes to get some weight behind it by giving the sheet music to Wild Man Moore, a trumpeting legend who has just landed in the city as part of a European tour. Moore is played by none other than Louis Armstrong, just to give you an idea of Paris Blues' musical bonafides. The original scorce was also composed by Duke Ellington, who was nominated for an Oscar. Ritt isn't fooling around.

Yet, he's also not limiting his story--which was written by four different scribes from a novel by Harold Flender--to just difficult men in smoky bars. When Ram goes to the train station to meet Moore, he also meets a pair of young American women in town to see the sights. One white (Lillian, played by Joanne Woodward) and one black (Connie, as portrayed by Diahann Carroll). To give you an idea of how progressive Paris Blues was for the time, despite the eventual romantic pairing being just as you suspect, Ram at first flirts with Connie without race even being mentioned. (And who wouldn't. Have you ever seen Diahann Carroll?!) Lillian is more his match, however, in that she's been around the block and has an admirable patience. The single mother has dealt with her fair share of troublemakers, Ram's temperament suits her. It's going to take some effort to get him to value anyone over his music, though.

Which he sort of will come to do over the time he and Lillian spend together in Paris. For the next several days, both pairs of lovers will try to fashion their affections into some kind of common ground. Lillian sees the possibility of something more with Ram. Connie would love for Eddie to come back to the States, but he's frank about his reasons for living overseas: America is racist. She argues it's gotten better in the five years since he left; he counters that it's still not good enough.

Paris Blues is very frank about its politics, but not in a way that makes it seem like a polemic just for the sake of it. The topics broached in the narrative emerge naturally. These are things the characters would care about, they deal with life as it would genuinely affect them. For as traditionally structured as much of the writing is, Paris Blues treats all aspects of these folks' existence in the same realistic manner. It's never said, but we know that Ram and Lillian are having sex. Ram's guitar player (French cinema legend Serge Reggiani, Casque d'Or) is also a drug addict, a fact Ram confronts head on (as befitting a ram, natch). Race, sex, drugs, art--this is important stuff. Ritt manages to make all these things come off as both matter of fact and yet also important. Hell, look closely at the opening montage, you'll see a gay couple tucked away in Ram and Eddie's audience.

But forget all that. The sights! Paris Blues was actually shot on the Seine! And the music! Louis Armstrong struts into Ram's club to challenge him to the jazz equivalent of a rap battle. The only comparable jazz-scene movie of the period is Basil Dearden's All Night Long [review], released a year after Paris Blues. This flick is the real deal.

You also get an acting quartet that was at the height of their considerable powers. Apparently at one point this was going to be a movie for Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. As wonderful as that is to imagine, you can't beat the chemistry of longtime paramours Newman and Woodward. They are the exception to the accepted rule that real lovers don't work on screen. Poitier and Carroll are wonderful, too--though much less showy. They are the practical couple, the counterpoint to the crazy Caucasians!

Final word: Paris Blues is a damn entertaining drama. It's romantic and toe-tapping and thought provoking. It deserves to sit next to Ritt and Newman's more famous collaborations, like Hud and The Long, Hot Summer. It's just that good.

EDGE OF THE CITY - CRITERION CHANNEL

This piece was originally written as part of a review of the boxed set The Sidney Poitier Collection back in 2009.

The cultural impact that Sidney Poitier had on cinema and society at large is indisputable. A dignified actor with a deep sense of social consciousness, he broke through racial barriers by choosing to play roles that shed the spotlight on intelligent black men--not perfect men, but men who lead their lives just like anyone else, with all the flaws that implies. Regardless of the role, Poitier refused to let any performance descend into racial clichés, and the example he created helped reshape the public perception of African Americans. It sounds frightfully simplistic, but such is the power of the moving image to shape the public perception. Roles in films like The Blackboard Jungle and The Defiant Ones forged Poitier's early reputation in the 1950s, and highly regarded turns in films like In the Heat of the Night [review], To Sir, With Love, and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner cemented his position as a cinematic icon in the 1960s. He would eventually direct, as well, and throughout his career, he would also accept the role of social activist. Still active to this day, he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2007, and he published the book Life Beyond Measure - Letters to my Great-Granddaughter in 2008.

The common theme of many of his films throughout his career remained the same: challenging the odds by trying to live life as it is meant to be. As his character says in 1957's Edge of the City, there are men and there are lower forms, and you can't let the lower forms push you into being anything less than the man that you are. (And given the respect Edge also pays to its female characters, one can assume he means "men" as in "humanity.")

Edge of the City was the directorial debut of Martin Ritt, a politically motivated artist with a passion and fury to match Poitier's. (Ritt is probably best known for Hud, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold [review], and Norma Rae.) It also features John Cassavetes in the co-starring role, adding to the film's legacy as an early spotlight for maverick film artists. (Cassavetes is the prototype for the cantankerous independent American director.) The film opens with Cassavetes' character, Axel North (née Nordmann), rolling in to New York City with only a little money and a dubious recommendation in his pocket. The name he drops at the rail yard is of a man in San Francisco, but it's enough to get him a job under the crooked foreman Charlie Malick (Jack Warden). Knowing that Axel is on the lam, Malick puts the screws to him. He also doesn't like it when Axel befriends Tommy "T.T." Tyler (Poitier), the only black foreman on the yard. As the two become close, Charlie gets more upset and eventually pushes for Axel's secrets to come out.

The core of the movie, which was written by Robert Alan Aurthur (All that Jazz [review]), is less about the past Axel is running from and more about how he learns to cope in the present. Tommy serves as a role model for the younger man. He's married and has a family, and his wife is an educated woman (Ruby Dee) who introduces Axel to an equally educated and socially active love interest (Kathleen Maguire). As Axel begins to trust Charlie, he is also given more strength to stand up for himself, to accept other people as they are, and accept whatever he may have done prior to NYC as something he can change. As far as male bonding goes, it's pretty healthy stuff. Cassavetes' twitchy method acting plays well against Poitier's upright performance, and Jack Warden rounds it out with smarmy menace. The climax where the two men must finally deal with this cranky thorn in their sides is maybe a little too On the Waterfront, but the gritty honesty of the writing up until that point allows Ritt to get away with it. A lot of the movie was shot on location, and so it has an on-the-street authenticity that prefigures French verite while also showing the influence of Jules Dassin's The Naked City [review].

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT - #959

Sometimes I just can’t find my way into a review.

It’s been five days since I watched In the Heat of the Night, and I’ve spent those days skulking past my computer, afraid to make eye contact with the screen, completely at a loss how to begin writing about Norman Jewison’s 1967 cop drama. A landmark of its time, and a template for many well-meaning race-related pictures to come, In the Heat of the Night is a crackling good film. It reminds me of Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder [review] in how engrossing it is, how easy to watch, how transcendent of its own genre.

But what perspective do I bring? I can acknowledge it’s a classic. I can graze up against the deeper issues of 1960s race relations and compare it to today, particularly the healthy distrust of law enforcement. I can talk about how Jewison avoids the folly of so many by neither making his black cop a saint nor his white cop a pure devil, how they are flawed men hampered by their own pride, and thus there is no real vindication or redemption for either, they just carry on. Surely all of this has already been said, though. Mayhap I am better served just cracking this process open and getting on with it.

Here’s the easy thing to explain: the plot. A man is found dead face down in the streets of Sparta, a small Mississippi town. The victim is a real estate developer from out of state looking to build a factory in the area. It would change the lives of the unemployed poor, but also disrupt the town’s established economy. In short, there are a few rich white folks that would rather not see the system altered.

Coincidentally, Homicide Detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier, A Raisin in the Sun [review]) gets stranded in Sparta on a layover waiting for his train to Pennsylvania. At first he is arrested by an overzealous cop (Warren Oates, Two-Lane Blacktop [review]) who finds an unknown African American with a wallet full of cash suspicious, but once his identity is revealed, Tibbs is asked to participate in solving the murder. Newly appointed Police Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger, Jubal [review]; On the Waterfront) would prefer not to take Tibbs’ help, fearing it will be more trouble than its worth, but once Tibbs takes the case between his teeth, Gillespie has little say. No one does, not even Sparta’s roving packs of violent racists or the brittle eccentric living in the big house on the outskirts of town. Tibbs won’t stop until the true culprit is in jail.

Poitier and Steiger make a great pair. The former is all forward intensity, and the latter reserved agitation. Gillespie is definitely a racist, but he’s also a pragmatist. One could argue he resents Tibbs as being an interloper from the big city as much as he does his being a black man. It’s a trope now, that the bigoted cop’s saving grace is his adherence to the law, but Steiger avoids caricature. He lives in Gillespie’s skin and isn’t afraid of his bad parts. Likewise, Poitier continues to evolve his own screen presence to keep Tibbs human and not a symbol. He’s the smartest man in the room, but too smart for his own good.

Indeed, the knotted personal drama of the small town is its own education for Tibbs. The murder is almost secondary to the struggles and gossip that informs Sparta’s day to day. Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool [review]) shoots the locales with a gritty vibrancy, never dressing up the shots, letting the people occupy the space. Even Oates’ shit-grinning cop and the petulant ingénue he peeps on (Quentin Dean) have the room to be people. Not very likeable people, but then really, how many of us are? The awesome Lee Grant (Shampoo [review]) also gets a pretty good turn as the dead man’s wife, a determined woman whose sense of personal justice cuts through the petty squabbles.

The only performance that moves close to parody is Larry Gates (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) as Endicott, the fat cat who runs Sparta from afar. Endicott is a riff on the mythological Confederate gentlemen, full of privilege and regretting progress. Jewison and writer Stirling Silliphant (The Poseidon Adventure) choose to stage his lone scene in a green house, symbolizing that he is a rare and wilting thing, no longer viable in the open air. This is a cliché we’ve seen before, most notably in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep [review]; here it seems an unnecessary and superfluous brush stroke.

The story of In the Heat of the Night remains every bit as challenging and incisive. The mystery is modern, even if some of the more “scandalous” aspects of it have lost their shock value. You might guess the real bad guy early, but you’ll forget you did amidst all the great character moments that follow. Add to this an ultra cool Quincy Jones score, complete with Ray Charles theme song, and you have a crime classic, its aesthetic perfectly bridging the gap from the squeaky clean studio system and the more grimy 1970s--an in between state that renders In the Heat of the Night truly timeless.

A RAISIN IN THE SUN - #945

What a massive space a tiny apartment can be.

In A Raisin in the Sun, five people share two bedrooms, with a communal bath in the hallway. All family. A mother and her two children, a son and daughter, the son’s wife, and their child. Three generations of African Americans, with each intersecting lifeline representing different wants and needs. Walter Lee (Sidney Poitier, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil [review]) is a hard-working provider looking to be his own boss rather than drive cars for rich white men all his life. His younger sister, Beneatha (Diana Sands, The Landlord), is a dreamer in search of an identity, trying many hobbies but settling on being a doctor--relatively unheard of for a black woman in the early 1960s. The young Travis (Stephen Perry, The Sound and the Fury) represents a new hope, the link between old and young, while the family matriarch, Lena (Claudia McNeil, Black Girl), looks to maintain traditional values. The real double-sided coin, however, is Lena and her daughter-in-law Ruth (Ruby Dee, Do The Right Thing). The two mothers really want to keep their family together, but the big difference between them is the older woman has a resolve built through years of hard work and belief, and the young women is starting to give up hope. Lena is determined to make everyone see that they should appreciate what they have--especially each other.

So much going on in just three little rooms.

A Raisin in the Sun was released in 1961, with author Lorraine Hansberry adapting her own successful stage play for journeyman filmmaker Daniel Petrie to direct. (Petrie will be known to Criterion fans for his versions of A Wind from the South and Bang the Drum Slowly on the Golden Age of Television set [review].) Both timely and frank, A Raisin in the Sun deftly draws together many strings of the African American experience of the period. Many factors pull at the Younger family, from changing opinions about faith to a growing disenchantment with the limited possibilities available to the impoverished and people of color. Beyond race, there are also issues of gender and questions of how individuals deal with one another.

Poitier is combustible and restless as Walter Lee, a man who has never had much to call his own. Now in his mid-30s and still living with his mother, and his only son sleeping on a couch rather than having a bed in his own room, he’s desperate for an opportunity, and sees one in the insurance payment due to Lena following the death of Walter Lee’s father. He wants to take the $10,000 and start a liquor store with his friends. Ruth thinks it’s too risky, and Lena thinks it’s immoral. Poitier is physically set to burst with each rejection. All he can see are the things that are holding him back.

By contrast, Claudia McNeil is unyielding and resolute. She speaks confidently, but with an even tone. She is comfortable in her position as head of the family, and firm in her beliefs. In terms of performance, she is a rock for Poitier and, to a degree, Diana Sands to attempt to climb, only to fall off time and again. She’s too stubborn, too squarely planted, for these youngsters to overcome, no matter how hard they fling themselves at her.

A Raisin in the Sun is confined in both space and time. The narrative takes place over only a couple of days, and outside of a few scenes in other locations, mostly connective tissue between acts, the action is exclusive in the apartment. While this is a holdover from the stage, Petrie doesn’t treat it as a limitation. He and cinematographer Charles Lawton Jr. (3:10 to Yuma [review]) move the camera to follow the characters, and the characters are so vibrant, even if the frame remained static, the movie would still hum with their energy. While each family member has their central driving motivation, their interaction allows for sidelines and vignettes, sequences that round out who they are more than forwarding the narrative, allowing for both humor and drama. Beneatha in particular has some funny scenes as different gentlemen callers come around. She is as flighty as Walter Lee is single-minded, and though they bicker like siblings only can, it’s fun to see them stop squabbling to goof around when Beneatha is exploring African music and dance. This strikes me as a very honest way to portray a family. A unit like this can switch on a dime, at odds one minute and coming together for a common cause the next. In the film’s final scenes, we see how far that sort of bond can be pushed, and at a point where it really counts. Walter Lee can stand up and be the man he is meant to be, an example to his son, a point of pride for his mother.

Most of the problems raised in A Raisin in the Sun are sadly still relevant: economic independence being out of reach, racial perception creating boundaries where there should be none, the pressure of poverty on a family. When Ruth turns out to be pregnant again, it’s less a cause for celebration and more one of concern. In many ways, the bluntness with which Hansberry approaches issues like abortion reminds me of British kitchen sink dramas, like A Taste of Honey [review] or This Sporting Life [review]. Why couch taboo subjects in coded language when so many members of the audience are going through the same thing? This is what allows A Raisin in the Sun to remain timeless: its specificity is universal. To be less true would have neutered it.

For this new release, Criterion has created a beautiful 4K image with nicely balanced black-and-white photography. They’ve also packed the disc with lots of special features, both old and new, to explore the history of A Raisin in the Sun as a piece of theater and as cinema, and look at the people who brought it to life.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.