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Post by Wesley Crusher on Feb 21, 2017 0:12:34 GMT
I wish Sidney Poitier had done more films ... he is FANTASTIC!
Sidney Poitier - (seen 23 films)
#40 Rated Actor/Actress
Top 13
9 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
8 To Sir, with Love (1967)
8 The Defiant Ones (1958)
8 A Patch of Blue (1965)
8 In the Heat of the Night (1967)
8 Lillies of the Field (1963)
8 A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
8 No Way Out (1950)
7 The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
7 Edge of the City (1957)
7 Sneakers (1992)
7 The Slender Thread (1965)
7 Pressure Point (1962)
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mrbeale
New Member
@mrbeale
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Post by mrbeale on Feb 21, 2017 1:35:58 GMT
Happy 90th b-day!  |
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Feb 21, 2017 10:28:40 GMT
Poitier has to be considered one of the most important cultural figures in American history, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner will be showing in theaters, as part of the Fathom Events TCM Big Screen Classics series, next December. link |
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Feb 21, 2017 10:46:54 GMT
90 years old today on February 20! Thank you for your activism and your art, and for these, among my favorites of all your memorable performances: In the Heat of the Night The Defiant Ones The Man Who Came to Dinner Patch of Blue Lilies of the Field A Raisin in the Sun I love The Defiant Ones—not exactly subtle, but the metaphor is so powerful and it certainly works. The film is also very atmospheric. A Patch of Blue is also terrific. And I feel that Poitier brought something to genre movies such as The Bedford Incident, Duel at Diablo, and The Organization. These films are not great, but Poitier elevated them somehow. Does anyone know why he left movies for a decade after he turned fifty? |
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Post by marshamae on Feb 21, 2017 13:48:08 GMT
He didn't have the kind of second act I would have hoped. It was going to be some years ( or maybe this is still not happening) before Black actors would be considered for race non specific roles. Don't know how often he was offered the part of a doctor, not a Black doctor, or a lawyer , not a Black lawyer.
His first act , raisin in the sun, Lillies if tge field and patch of blue were spectacular.
He was good in Guess who's Coming to Dinner but I find it unbearable . It's a creature of its time, and its main flaws were caused by the effort if the writer to isolate race as the cause of discomfort. To do that they had to make the doctor, so perfect, the girl so blind to anything but her interest in this man, the white parents so earnest and the Black Parents so proud. No one had any complex motives so all that was left was polemic. If it weren't Tracy's last film, I wonder if we would ever see it now.
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Post by spiderwort on Feb 21, 2017 14:32:04 GMT
He was good in Guess who's Coming to Dinner but I find it unbearable . It's a creature of its time, and its main flaws were caused by the effort if the writer to isolate race as the cause of discomfort. I don't find it truly unbearable, just not very good for the reasons you mention - certainly not as good as I would have hoped. But I listed it because of its historical significance, given its subject matter at that time and the fact that it was a major Hollywood film. It was a wonder it even got made. I wish it had been like Kramer's earlier The Defiant Ones, so much more honest and dramatically provocative. In any case, I do think Poitier was terrific in the film. That said, there was another film, One Potato, Two Potato (1964), starring Barbara Barrie (Oscar nominated) and Bernie Hamilton, that did a masterful job of exploring an interracial marriage. But it was a tiny independent film, compared to the high profile Hollywood studio film that Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was. In 1960s dollars the former cost $340,000; the latter $4,000,000. |
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Post by naterdawg on Feb 21, 2017 15:11:50 GMT
My favorite film of Poitier's is the under-rated A PATCH OF BLUE.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2017 15:21:44 GMT
To Sir With Love. Fantastic film. And given I'm also a fan of Patricia Routledge (It's B-U-C-K-E-T, pronounced BOUQUET!!), it was interesting to see her in the movie as well.
Poitier was my first crush when I was young girl watching his movies. He exudes such charm and charisma that regardless of the role, you can just feel him through the screen! XX
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2017 15:27:24 GMT
Have to admit, I didn't realise he was still alive. I like him though! THE DEFIANT ONES is a really good film which I saw a couple months back for the first time  |
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Post by marshamae on Feb 21, 2017 15:46:45 GMT
Spider, Love One Potato Two Potato. But appearing in it almost ended Barbara Barrie's career. That's how it was in the 60's.
You are right about the cultural significance of GWCTD, and it could never have been made without a perfect person as the romantic lead.
One nice thing is the honor shown to Poitier by today's Black stars who know he opened the door. He did a few things he didn't want to do, like Porgy and Bess, but his filmography has mostly good films . That in itself is praise worthy.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Mar 3, 2017 6:52:21 GMT
He didn't have the kind of second act I would have hoped. It was going to be some years ( or maybe this is still not happening) before Black actors would be considered for race non specific roles. Don't know how often he was offered the part of a doctor, not a Black doctor, or a lawyer , not a Black lawyer. His first act , raisin in the sun, Lillies if tge field and patch of blue were spectacular. He was good in Guess who's Coming to Dinner but I find it unbearable . It's a creature of its time, and its main flaws were caused by the effort if the writer to isolate race as the cause of discomfort. To do that they had to make the doctor, so perfect, the girl so blind to anything but her interest in this man, the white parents so earnest and the Black Parents so proud. No one had any complex motives so all that was left was polemic. If it weren't Tracy's last film, I wonder if we would ever see it now. Did you (or anyone else) see the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro, based on the 1979 writings of James Baldwin? It recently received a brief theatrical run, and although Baldwin's writing is centered upon the 1960s assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, he deals with Hollywood movies and Sidney Poitier quite a bit. Baldwin says (in narration by Samuel L. Jackson) that most black folks did not like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner—they felt that the film 'used' Poitier, meaning that it used him as an instrument by which white folks could work out their own racial anxieties and shortcomings. I have not seen the film since 2002, and I believe that I have only viewed it once, so I will look forward to the fiftieth-anniversary theatrical screening later this year. I do believe that people would regard the movie as significant regardless of whether it constituted Tracy's final film, because it broke new ground in representing a different kind of racism—the racism of people who are not "racists," if you will, of people who seem to be totally different from the Southern bigots in Poitier's other iconic 1967 movie, In the Heat of the Night. If you want to see this kind of exploration in a more contemporary film, check out True Crime (Clint Eastwood, 1999), which I feel is subtly one of the best American films ever on race. The movie is not polemical (and certainly not archaic) at all, and in a naturalistic way, the film addresses the sort of prejudice that Guess Who's Coming to Dinner represented. (The stories have nothing in common, though.)
***This last part contains a spoiler about The Defiant Ones.***In I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin also states that at the end of of The Defiant Ones, black folks wanted the Poitier character to just stay on the train rather than reaching out to the Tony Curtis character. A black man, in their view, had to take his shot at liberation when he had it, rather than reaching back to (in effect) help the white man feel better about his racial progress. |
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