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Summary: An American Classic In Black And White
Comment: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" So begins what is perhaps Langston Hughes' most famous poem "A Dream Deferred" and ends with the line, "Or does it explode?" The writer Lorraine Hansberry lifted the quotation from Hughes' powerful poem for her equally powerful award-winning play that ultimately became the 1961 film starring Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands, directed by Daniel Petrie for which Ms. Hansberry wrote the screenplay.
It is safe to say that America had never seen a film quite like this one coming not that long after Brown v. Board of Education and on the eve of the racial change of the 1960's. I saw the film in Syracuse, New York in 1964; and as a white Southerner, I was so pleased with myself. Now over 40 years later it has only gotten better with time. Sad to say, one need only drive though practically any neighborhood in any city in any state in the union to see that unfortunately forty years after the passage of the Federal Fair Housing Act the pupose of which was to make racial discrimination in housing illegal and to promote integration many African American familes experience what the Younger family did in Chicago. They are not welcome in an all-white neighborhood and are confronted with racial prejudice when they try to purhase a home. Our nation remains racially segregated.
But the film is much more than about race. It is also about the conflict of generations and between husbands and wives. It is about pride and dreams, living your dreams through your children, the importance of family, and redemption through love. As the matriarch of the family Lena Younger says, you should never stop loving someone, particularly when they are at the lowest: "There is always something to love."
There is so much conflict in this wondrous film that it practically explodes. The acting by everyone is impeccable. Sidney Poitier, who for years was the only black actor to have received an Oscar for best actor ("Lilies of the Field") should have won an academy award for his performance as Walter Lee Younger. His confrontation with the white representative from the Community Improvement Association is as good as acting gets. "We are going to try to be good neighbors." Of course Ruby Dee is an American treasure. And Claudia McNeil is magnificent as the matriarch of the family, its moral center, who seeps love and compassion although her love is tough. There is one powerful scene (of many) where she makes her daughter Beneatha all full of dreams of Africa and medical school and no religion repeat: "In my mother's house there is a God."
If there is any lover of movies alive today who hasn't seen this particular version of this truly American story, you owe it to youself to rent what is one of the best American films ever made.
