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<\/a><\/p>\nThe latest in a month-long series of re-posts from my Facebook marathon in April 2020.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2013<\/p>\n
Sidney Poitier marathon part 10 (1965b-1966):<\/b><\/p>\n
Oh dear. I think I\u2019m in love. A Patch of Blue<\/i> (1965)<\/b> is easily one of the best films I have seen as part of this marathon, and it\u2019s certainly the most emotionally engaging of the bunch (so far). I was shedding real tears by the end of this one.<\/p>\n
The story concerns an 18-year-old girl named Selina who was accidentally blinded by her mother, a prostitute, at the age of five, and who has been not-so-accidentally abused by her mother ever since. One day Selina\u2019s frequently-drunk grandfather takes her outside to a park and leaves her there, and Sidney Poitier walks by and befriends her\u2026 and, as the two of them get to know each other (over the course of multiple meetings), he decides to help her become more independent, and she, in turn, falls in love, not knowing that he is black \u2014 which could be a problem, given her mother\u2019s racism.<\/p>\n
There are so, so many ways this story could have gone wrong, but the movie steers clear of all those pitfalls. It could have lapsed into cheap sentiment, but it\u2019s wiser than that \u2014 and so, too, are its characters, who certainly feel the lure<\/i> of sentiment but are ultimately self-aware enough to rise above it.<\/p>\n
Selina, for example, is naive and uneducated about many things, because she has never known life outside of her mother\u2019s apartment \u2014 but she has also experienced terrible things that catch Poitier by surprise when she mentions them. She also has real human agency, which expresses itself in small ways at first \u2014 like when she tells Poitier not to buy a tomato because it\u2019s too soft \u2014 but those moments hint at her potential to be even more assertive. (I love the tomato bit because Poitier is in the middle of trying to \u201cteach\u201d Selina about grocery shopping and other Outside World things, and her reply shows that she already knows some things, and indeed that he might be able to learn a thing or two from her. She\u2019s not just a blank slate that he can project things onto.)<\/p>\n
As for Poitier\u2019s character, it would be so easy for his chivalry to morph into something more toxic and self-gratifying, but he catches himself in time \u2014 he is aware<\/i> that he cannot allow his laudible concern for Selina to bleed into a romantic fling, and he knows that any sort of sexual relationship between them at this<\/i> stage would basically be a form of exploitation. Selina needs a chance to heal, to experience more of life, to become a truly whole person before he can even consider getting involved with her. And if he doesn\u2019t<\/i> get involved with her down the road, because she has grown in a different direction from him, then he is smart enough to know that that\u2019s okay, too.<\/p>\n
I also really appreciate the way the film gives Poitier a brother (played by Ivan Dixon, who co-starred with Poitier in 1959\u2019s Porgy and Bess<\/a><\/i> and 1961\u2019s A Raisin in the Sun<\/a><\/i>). Just the fact that the brother exists makes Poitier a more-defined character in his own right, rather than someone who exists only for Selina\u2019s sake; if Selina is more than a blank slate, then Poitier is more than a blank slate, too. The brother also challenges some of Poitier\u2019s actions in a way that underscores the fact that Poitier\u2019s character is making active choices and not just slipping into some sort of predefined role in Selina\u2019s life. (The brother, incidentally, is an intern at a hospital; this is 15 years after Poitier played a doctor in his first film, 1950\u2019s No Way Out<\/a><\/i>.)<\/p>\n Poitier also gives one of his best, most natural, performances to date here. The joy he takes in getting to know Selina is infectious, but you can also sense his repressed irritation when he catches people in the park looking at them \u2014 a black man and a white woman walking together \u2014 a little funny.<\/p>\n Those hints of racism in the park give a real suspense to the scene in which Poitier and Selina\u2019s mother finally confront each other, in public, over Selina\u2019s future. And the final scene between Poitier\u2019s character and Selina is so beautifully written, and beautifully performed, I\u2019m getting a little choked up just thinking about it (and I watched the movie yesterday).<\/p>\n Anyway. This movie is a real gem. I have been impressed by a number of the Poitier films I have seen so far, but none have moved me like this one. Indeed, I\u2019m not entirely sure how long it\u2019s been since any<\/i> movie moved me like this one.<\/p>\n A few other quick points about this film:<\/p>\n \u2014 Selina is played by Elizabeth Hartman, who had never been in a movie before. She was nominated for an Oscar for this film and, at the time, she was the youngest best actress nominee ever. (She was 22. Her record was beaten by 20-year-old Isabelle Adjani in 1976, then by 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2004, and then by 9-year-old Quvenzhan\u00e9 Wallis in 2013.) Hartman\u2019s last movie was 1982\u2019s The Secret of NIMH<\/i>, in which she provided the voice of Mrs Brisby.<\/p>\n \u2014 Selina\u2019s mother is played by Shelley Winters, who won her second Oscar, for best supporting actress, for this role. (She won her first for 1959\u2019s The Diary of Anne Frank<\/i>.) Winters and Poitier both had cameos in 1965\u2019s The Greatest Story Ever Told<\/a><\/i>, but they did not share any scenes in that film.<\/p>\n \u2014 I believe this movie has Poitier\u2019s first onscreen interracial kiss. Guess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner<\/a><\/i> was still two years away.<\/p>\n \u2014 Once again, a Poitier character is called upon to sing (and whistle). I assume the fact that Poitier is tone-deaf in real life means he was dubbed again in those scenes.<\/p>\n \u2014 The piano-based score, by Jerry Goldsmith, is a huge part of why this movie worked for me. It reminded me at times of Michael Giacchino\u2019s score for Pixar\u2019s Inside Out<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n After this, Poitier dabbled in straightforward genre films again \u2014 films in which his race was not an issue, i.e. films in which his character could have been played by an actor of any race.<\/p>\n The Slender Thread<\/i> (1965)<\/b> is one of those suspenseful films in which there\u2019s a race against time to save someone\u2019s life but the protagonist spends the entire film on the phone \u2014 which, in the pre-mobile age, means he spends the entire film in a single room.<\/p>\n In this case, Poitier is the protagonist, who works at a crisis call centre, and Anne Bancroft is a suicidal woman who calls the hotline after swallowing a bunch of pills \u2014 and as Bancroft tells her story, we get flashbacks to the crisis in her marriage that brought her to this point. (Some of the scenes between Bancroft and her husband are handled really well. You find yourself really hoping that things go in a positive direction even though you know that, because she ends up attempting suicide, they won\u2019t.)<\/p>\n One curious thing about this movie is the way Bancroft\u2019s voice plays on the soundtrack like she\u2019s narrating the movie even when what we\u2019re supposed<\/i> to be hearing is the sound of her voice coming through the speakers in the call-centre office. The sound mix is more non-diegetic than diegetic, if I can put it that way; it lacks the distortion that we would expect to hear from a voice coming over the phone line.<\/p>\n But the fact that Bancroft\u2019s voice sounds so detached from the movie does give a little extra oomph, for lack of a better word, to her ruminations about death etc. (At one point she comments on the fact that some of the people we hear on TV laugh tracks are probably dead by now, but they go right on laughing \u2014 a point Orson Welles made in a 1979 appearance<\/a> on the Dinah Shore talk show that has circulated on social media in recent years.)<\/p>\n A few other quick points:<\/p>\n \u2014 Bancroft happened to be the presenter who gave Poitier his best actor award at the Oscars in 1964. She had won best actress the year before for The Miracle Worker<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u2014 This was the first movie directed by Sydney Pollack. It also marks the first time Dabney Coleman appeared on the big screen (he\u2019s unrecognizable without his moustache), and the third time Ed Asner appeared on the big screen.<\/p>\n \u2014 The guy who runs the call centre is played by Telly Savalas, who had an actual role (as Pontius Pilate) and not just a cameo in 1965\u2019s The Greatest Story Ever Told<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u2014 This was the fourth movie to be scored by Quincy Jones. It also features a scene at a discotheque called The Go-Go House, which might<\/i> make this the first Poitier film to feature some form of rock\u2019n\u2019roll since 1955\u2019s Blackboard Jungle<\/a><\/i> (the intervening films have had plenty of jazz, but not rock, I think). Or did we hear some rock\u2019n\u2019roll in A Patch of Blue<\/i>?<\/p>\n \u2014 The IMDb says The Slender Thread<\/i> and A Patch of Blue<\/i> opened within a week of each other in December 1965. I\u2019m not sure if any other Poitier films opened that close together.<\/p>\n \u2014 Poitier\u2019s character is a college student. Poitier himself was 38 when the film came out. Not impossible, but still\u2026 (Meanwhile, Bancroft\u2019s character is 30; Bancroft herself was 34 when the film came out.)<\/p>\n \u2014 I love the old-fashioned switchboards and phone numbers (\u201cMaine 2-1454\u201d and so on).<\/p>\n \u2014 The film is set in Seattle and begins with aerial shots of the city. (The Space Needle had been built only three years earlier, in 1962.) Later, we learn that Bancroft\u2019s husband has sailed past Victoria on a fishing trip to Hecate Strait. (This is not the last Poitier film that will straddle the Washington\/BC border!)<\/p>\n Finally, Poitier co-starred in Duel at Diablo<\/i> (1966)<\/b>, his first Western.<\/p>\n The film, which concerns a cavalry unit attacked by Apaches, is mainly about James Garner\u2019s character, a scout who wants revenge against the white man who killed his Comanche wife, as well as Bibi Andersson\u2019s character, whose husband has rejected her ever since she was abducted by the Apaches. Poitier, who gets second billing, plays a former cavalryman who sold some horses to the army and is obliged to travel with the unit because the horses aren\u2019t fully broken in yet.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an okay film but nothing to write home about. A few quick points:<\/p>\n \u2014 The beginning and end of the film both feature a cavalry sabre that cuts an X through the screen, to reveal the dramatic action behind the titles and vice versa.<\/p>\n \u2014 Andersson appeared in this film the same year she appeared in Ingmar Bergman\u2019s Persona<\/a><\/i> (!).<\/p>\n