A well acted and no doubt historically important film of Lorraine Hansberry play about a poor black family in Chicago and their problems associated with a $10,000 insurance payout.
The family are Sidney Poitier, giving a sublimely physical performance, mum Claudia McNeil, wife Ruby Dee and sister Diana Sands. With Ivan Dixon, John Fiedler, Lou Gossett Jr.
I'm not normally a fan of filmed plays, particularly those in which the setting is claustrophobically a single dwelling - though I love The Man Who Came to Dinner and The Odd Couple, both of which are that. Both of those are comedies, though...
The movie version was somewhat toned down. Hansberry's family moved into a white area of Chicago in the 1930s - at one point a white mob threw a block of concrete through their front window. That sense of danger is missing.
Photographed by Charles Lawton.
"How come all you college boys wear those faggoty white shoes?"
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