Sidney Poitier should have been angry, but his dignity shines through instead

SIDNEY ★★★★

(PG) 112 minutes

Sidney Poitier had a saintly air about him. The first black actor to become a big box-office star, he made sure the characters he played came thoroughly equipped with courage, dignity and moral strength.

Sidney Poitier’s career and personal life is covered in Reginald Hudlin’s fond and engaging documentary.

While this cramped his style as an actor, he decided it was worth it, feeling obliged to do what he could to reverse the unwritten rule that black people on screen should be condemned to roles as servants and clowns.

Inevitably, it caused Malcolm X and the Black Power movement of the 1960s to write him off for being too good to be true, while The New York Times weighed in with a piece coming down on him for portraying one-dimensional, antiseptic heroes fulfilling “a white liberals’ fantasy”.

He recalls these slurs in Sidney, Reginald Hudlin’s fond and engaging account of his remarkable life. And typically, he sounds rueful rather than justifiably furious. After all, around this time, he and his best friend and fellow actor Harry Belafonte were risking their lives for the civil rights cause.

Having agreed to carry money to the activists in Mississippi, they flew in one night in 1964, expecting to be met by federal marshals, since there had been death threats. Instead, it fell to local activists to protect them from Ku Klux Klansmen, who tried to run them off the road during a hair-raising drive from the airport

Anchoring the film is a lengthy interview Poitier gave during his retirement, but Hudlin has come up with a wealth of archival photographs and footage taking us right back to his childhood on Cat Island in the Bahamas, where he was born in 1927.

The island lacked electricity and running water and Poitier was 10 before he saw a car for the first time. His introduction to racial prejudice came a little later, prompting his move to New York, where he found a haven in Harlem.

The hallmarks of his acting were his resonant baritone and authoritative delivery, yet he could hardly read when he first auditioned for the American Negro Theatre. An elderly waiter at the bar where he washed dishes became his tutor and his career took off.

The film is so packed with shots of his friends and family affectionately reminiscing about him that it verges on hagiography, but who cares? Proof of his career’s political importance is in the clips from his films. They’re full of emblematic moments, among them the scene from In the Heat of the Night in which a white plantation owner hits Poitier across the face only to be hit right back. It came to be known as the slap heard round the world.

Sidney is streaming on Apple TV+ from September 22.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday

Most Viewed in Culture

From our partners

Source: Read Full Article