Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 166: Simply Sidney

For those of you who have been following the Oscar challenge you will now that when I can I group a number of films together by actor or genre. This is true of this latest trio of films all starring Sidney Poitier who historically was the first African-American actor to become a big star and in terms of this was also the first black male to win an Oscar outside of the honorary categories. We first met him at the tail end of the 1950s in The Defiant Ones for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar and his golden touch continues with all the three films in this list winning at least one award. As you can imagine with a black actor in the 1960s a lot of these films deal with racial prejudice with Poitier often playing against how people of his colour were often portrayed here playing doctors and detectives. But we'll start off with a film in which he neither plays a professional nor is race the main issue.

The film I am referring to is Lilies of the Field the film that won Poitier his Best Actor Oscar and sees him play Homer Smith a drifter and jack-of-all trades who has no fixed abode. When his car runs out of water one day he stops to fill it up at a convent run by Eastern European nuns with the mother superior of the outfit hiring Homer to do some work around their property for the day. However after a while he discovers the mother superior won't let him leave until he has built them a chapel and he soon learns from others the exploitative nature of these nuns. At the same time he sympathises with their struggle to leave their native Germany, they had to climb over the Berlin Wall, and as he had always wanted to be an architect he sets about trying to build the chapel. As word spreads people from the community, mainly Hispanics, come to lend support and materials however Homer refuses their help wanting this to be a single-handed project. He eventually gets the help and the chapel is finished however Mother Maria is too proud to let him stay and so he slips away while the other sisters are singing one of the Baptist hymns he taught them. Lilies of the Field is such a simple film but at the same time is lovingly produced and well put together by director Ralph Nelson. The main theme of the film here is outsiders coming together in this case an African-American drifter, a group of East German nuns and poor Hispanic families as they work to construct something that the community can be proud of. Poitier's performance is larger-than-life with his laughter being infectious and his general aura radiating from the screen he is tasked with leading the film for the most-part and does an excellent job. The desolate locations are well-filmed by Ernest Haller and there is also an excellent supporting performance from Lilia Skala as Mother Maria which earned her an Oscar nod also. This was just a lovely simple tale about family and taking the gifts that are offered to us when they are given.

Four years later, at the 1968 ceremony, Sidney starred in two of the five films nominated for Best Picture including the movie that went onto to win Best Picture that year - In the Heat of the Night. In this film the plot is centred around Poitier's Virgil Tibbs' race as he hauled to the police station in Sparta, Mississippi as he believed to have killed a man he had never met. The racist police Chief Bill Gillespie, played by Rod Steiger who won a Best Actor Oscar for this film, is embarrassed to learn that Tibbs is actually a homicide detective and devices ways to keep him around in order to have his help on the murder case. As Tibbs' targets the wealthiest man in Sparta he soon his confronted by a mob who threaten his life and he is advised by Gillespie to leave the town however a defiant Tibbs refuses until he's solved the murder. Tibbs is able to link the crime to the pregnancy of a local teenager who police officer Sam Wood had taken a liking to and after a conversation with the local backstreet abortionist he is able to track down his man. However will it be too late for Tibbs who has angered even more of Sparta's residents during his snooping. In the Heat of the Night is an excellent film showing racial prejudice at its most extreme with the scenes in which Tibbs his hunted down by a mob being very shocking indeed however the film is also keen to point out that Tibbs is also prejudice against many of the Sparta police department seeing them as stupid. Though Poitier does lend almost a moral backbone to the film it is Rod Steiger who is the star here as Gillespie learns some tolerance and some respect towards Virgil towards the end of the film. There were some points when I watched In The Heat of the Night where I wondered if it should've won the Best Picture award but this film had a good central mystery as well as having a good message about not judging anyone on where they live or the colour of their skin.

The colour of skin also has a massive impact in Poitier's last film here the outstanding Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Here Poitier plays widower doctor John Prentice who while on holiday in Hawaii meets Christina Drayton and falls in love planning to marry her but first wanting to get the consent of her parents who he thinks will worry that a black man is with their white daughter. Christina's parents, played by the brilliant Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey the latter in his final film role, have always preached her tolerance but her father Matt is concerned now that he may have a black man as a son-in-law. Things get more complicated when John's parents decide to fly in for dinner despite the fact he has yet to tell them that he wishes to marry a white girl. The film is essentially based around people's opinions of a mixed-race couple for example if love is more important than the colour of someone's skin. I just found it hard to fault Guess Who's Coming to Dinner apart from the fact that I think Poitier should've shown up in the acting categories alongside Hepburn and Tracy both of whom shine throughout this wonderful film. Possibly it's not as cinematic as it could been but the performances and script are flawless throughout so by the time Tracy delivers his final monologue you'll be entrnaced. For me this was the better of the two Poitier films released this year due to its themes, acting, music and script. Though out of the three films this is the one in which Poitier has the least to do yet his presence is still felt which is the mark of a great actor as is the fact that everyone of the roles in these three films he plays very differently.