BLACK MOVIES

Introducing Your Partner of a Different Background to Your Parents? Prepare Them With This

Posted on by G Virdee for MovieBrando

Sometimes I get lucky when attempting my challenge of watching all films featured in the American Film Institute’s top 100 movies of all time like this weekend when just as I was wondering how I’m going to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon I came across a film which needed to be ticked off my list. Actually my brother came across it after trying to give a Danny Dyer and Martin Kemp flick a shot, but only lasting ten minutes before changing the channel (what did he expect it to be? A masterpiece?). ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner? (1967: AFI, 1998 #99) couldn’t be further away from a British gangster film set in the noughties. Firstly there is hardly any action and most of the movie takes place in one location, the house of Mr and Mrs Drayton played by arguably the greatest screen couple to have ever graced the silver screen; Spencer Tracy and the most successful female Oscar winner of all time (yup, even more successful than Meryl Streep, would you believe?) Katherine Hepburn.

Trailer for the 1967 Oscar winning movie ‘Guess who’s coming to Dinner?

Set in an affluent  white upper middle class neighbourhood  in San Francisco in the 1960s the story centres around the Drayton’s whose liberal tolerance gets tested when their daughter introduces them to her black fiancé played by Sidney Poitier – who is the first black actor to win an Oscar (although not for this role, but ‘Lilies in the Field). The plot is simple and hardly shocking by today’s standards, but for the time when racial tension in North America was at an all time high it was perhaps a surprise that Stanley Kramer’s movie was a critical and commercial success. Even more startling is that it was well received in the notoriously racist Southern States and released just a year before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. There is even a scene where the family’s black maid Tillie who is clearly the most offended by the presence of Poitier sarcastically asks if “The Reverend Martin Luther King” is coming to dinner too?

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Maid Tillie interrogates Poitier

The movie definitely deserves its spot on the AFI’s top 100 films of all time list – it highlights the deep rooted racial prejudices even the most tolerant people have. Kramer wanted to make Poitier’s character Dr. John Wayde Prentice Jr. flawless – he is well educated, respectful and does not believe in sex before marriage – he is a perfect suitor for Joey. The only that is preventing her parents from jumping for joy is that he is black.

The subject matter of this blockbuster is sadly relevant in today’s society. Even though interracial relationships are more common than ever there is a still a stigma attached to them. But naively I was under the impression that in the UK non-black ethnic minorities were the only group who still found it difficult introducing their families to their partner from a different background and that black and white people were better integrated. But after watching the British comedy ‘Chewing Gum (2015)’ I realised some black people found it hard tell their parents they were dating a white person as protagonist Tracey (no relation to Spencer) does throughout the first series. Perhaps roles are reversed and ethnic minorities are now the ones who seem to find it hard to accept other races into their families rather than just white people.

Although ‘Guess who’s coming to Dinner’ had the happy ending we liberal people of the Twenty-First Century hoped for I couldn’t help but feel sad knowing that this was Spencer Tracy’s last movie before his death – he died only two weeks after completing the film. So his heartfelt speech where he declares that he accepts the relationship is even more poignant as it feels this is farewell to his onscreen and real life lover Hepburn and to the world as he knew his time was drawing an end.

Spencer Tracy gives his memorable speech weeks before his death

Nevertheless the legacy of Tracy and his unforgettable character Mr Drayton still lives on; not only was his last role considered one of his finest he was also the inspiration for lovable Carl Fredricksen in Pixar’s classic animated ‘Up! (2009). For the exceptional characters and acting from the crème a La crème of Hollywood as well as the topic that is still a subject of conversation today  – I give this flick 4.5 out of 5.

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Lead character in ‘Up’ is inspired by Spencer Tracy

The movie can also be a useful tool to show to your parents before bringing someone home they may not approve off as suggested by my brother – I wonder who he’s planning on bringing home to meet the folks

 

Spike Lee has us asking the same question more than 25 years later

Posted on by G Virdee for MovieBrando

I’ve been pretty troubled with some of the news I’ve been reading from across the pond – it seems like attitudes to race hasn’t changed much in some areas of States since the Civil Rights Movement. Despite there being a black President it appears that deep rooted prejudice is more prevalent than ever and with the rise of citizen journalism on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook people in authoritative positions have been exposed for abusing their power.

Depressingly Hollywood has a history of excluding black actors in their movies or casting them in roles which were stereotypical. There was a huge uproar when Hattie McDaniel, who played a maid in ‘Gone with the Wind’, was forbidden from attending the première of her own movie in 1939. Although she was able to collect her Best Supporting Actress accolade at the Academy Awards (the first ever won by a black actor) she was unable to sit with the cast at the front and was placed at the back of the theatre on her own with an escort. You’d think racism would have been completely erased from modern day American cinema, but leaked racist emails of top Hollywood producers mocking Obama earlier in the year revealed the problem still exists.

Hattie McDaniel accepts her Oscar in 1940

So it’s not surprising that the 1998 and 2007 list of the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time only has one ‘black’ film – ‘Do the right thing’ (1989: AFI 2007, #96), directed and starring Spike Lee. The movie set in a black neighbourhood in Brooklyn centres around Mookie who works as a Pizza delivery man for an Italian-American family. Although he gets along with the owner, his son Pino dislikes blacks and often clashes with Mookie. Racial tension between the Italians and African Americans in the neighbourhood steadily rise over the course of the film until it reaches boiling point. This is when the audience ask themselves ‘Did Mookie do the right thing?’ I don’t want to give away the plot too much, so will not say exactly what he did, but what makes the film so unique is that it is extremely difficult to answer and it has people questioning whether or not they hold the same prejudices depicted by some of the characters in the film.

Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Richard Edson & John Turturro

I’m guilty of initially having the opinion of most non-blacks by believing the main character was wrong for his actions, but in an recent interview Lee stated that he had not come across one black person who thought the protagonist was wrong and they all believe that Mookie was  justified for his actions because he reached boiling point. What people also fail to realise is his actions in the penultimate scene of the movie indirectly prevented more serious casualties – nothing in more precious than a life. How could I have missed that?

Spike Lee speaks about his landmark movie 25 years later 

The movie rightly deserves its place in the list; it terrifically depicts urban life in New York in the late 80’s. The stylish freestyle dance sequence done by a then unknown Rosie Perez in the opening credits highlights that Spike Lee not only hoped to create a movie that was socially conscious but wanted to showcase all the positive things black culture has brought into the mainstream. Although this movie is blueprint for films that explored similar themes in the 1990s, I feel that ‘Boyz in the Hood’ (1991) and ‘Menace II Society’ (1993) were more gripping and for this reason I give this movie a 3 out of 5.