In South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) journeys to the city to search for his missing son, only to find his people living in squalor and his son a criminal. Reverend Misimangu (Sidney Poitier) is a young South African clergyman who helps find his missing son-turned-thief and sister-turned-prostitute in the slums of Johannesburg.Read More »
A woman whose past is scorned by nearly everyone around her meets a man who’d love her regardlessly- if only everyone else would allow them to.Read More »
An examination of the life of actor and singer Paul Robeson, from his first major triumphs on the stage in the 1920s through his gradually increasing social activism in the 1930s and 1940s, leading to his controversial performances in Eastern Europe in the 1940s in which he performed communist anthems and criticized American social conditions.Read More »
An African-American police detective is asked to investigate a murder in a racially hostile southern town.Read More »
Synopsis:
Frustrated by his inability to help an African-American patient who hates whites, a psychiatrist (Peter Falk) asks his superior (Sidney Poitier) to release him from the case. The superior relates a case from his own past during World War II when he treated a young Nazi (Bobby Darin) who despised blacks. Explaining the tragic results of the case, the older psychiatrist encourages his younger colleague not to be swayed by the patient’s attitude, to remain objective and to stick with his treatment.Read More »
Quote:
While perhaps too consciously schematic in its pairing of a black man and a blind white girl during an era of heightened racial awareness, this small film is a tender and moving story of friendship. Sidney Poitier stars as a man who befriends a blind girl (Elizabeth Hartman) he often sees in the park, and as he comes to understand the harshness of her family life, encourages her to reach out for a better life.Read More »
Plot Synopsis by Paul Brenner
Sidney Pollack marked his feature film directing debut with this taut suspense drama, based upon an actual incident reported in Time Magazine. Sidney Poitier stars as Alan Nuell, a student volunteer at a medical clinic in Seattle who answers the phone to find Inge Dyson (Anne Bancroft) on the other end. Inge, depressed about her life, has just taken an overdose of sleeping pills. With Inge slowly dying, Alan tries to keep her talking on the phone while the police try to trace the call and save her life. Inge tells Alan that she has decided to end it all because her husband has discovered that he is not the father of her son.Read More »
Joey Drayton brings her fiancé, Dr. John Prentice, home to sunny San Francisco to meet her affluent parents. Their liberal persuasions are now put to the test, for although the young man is an ideal choice (he’s highly and internationally respected in the medical field, and he’s impeccably mannered, handsome, well dressed and of a respectable California family), he’s black. The film, which covers one busy day in the Drayton home, is essentially a drawing-room comedy, a series of cross-conversations between the young doctor and the girl’s parents, and finally between all sets of parents and offspring. A simple dinner is extended to include the doctor’s parents, who fly up from Los Angeles for the evening, and the crusty but benevolent old Irish priest, a friend of the family. Thus, the title of the film . . .
Joker Jackson and Noah Cullen are two convicts on a chain gang who hate each other. After a truck prison accident, they flee and are pursued by the police. While they’re chained, the two are dependent on one another. When they eventually get rid of their chains, their hostility has been changed into fellowship and respect.Read More »