A Patch of Blue starred Sydney Poitier, Shelly Winters (who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this film), and Elizabeth Hartmen. The movie tells the tale of a blind woman (Hartmen) who meets a friendly stranger in the park. The two spend time together and eventually fall in love. The movie takes place over a racially divided American landscape and tells a story which takes color out of our world. We discover "love is blind."
So, if that is what this thought provoking movie is about...what is with this original poster?
Does it seem odd that a movie exploring pointless racial inequality would make this poster? It has a large picture of the actress playing the blind woman, a lot of blue (involving the movie's name), and down in the bottom left corner is a tiny little picture of Sydney Poitier. It looks like they just used his head-shot to fill some space. He is the most well known actor in the movie, in the leading male role, and this is the image they came up with.
I can see (no pun intended...or was it intended since I have clearly taken time to type "no pun intended" where as I could have just deleted this whole beginning and not written this whole bit?) what the main theme of the poster is going for. The poster would be better suited if it just left his image off of it completely. The 2 well known stars (Shirley Winters is the other) could have just had top name billing and that would be fine. But to taunt the idea of equality which this movie preaches by installing a random smile from Poitier is reckless. It subconsciously says the characters, and thus races, are not equal.
Then again...my hypersensitivity towards racism may mean I am covering my own hidden racism.
This blog post is my small picture of Sydney Poitier.
2 comments:
Great observation. I totally wanna see this movie now.
PS - hilarious tangeant..."(no pun intended...or was it intended since I have clearly taken time to type "no pun intended" where as I could have just deleted this whole beginning and not written this whole bit?)"
LOL well played sir.
I actually really like this movie but was unaware of this original movie poster. Nice point.
And I agree about the hypersensitivity to racism makes you racist. I'm glad you have come to that realization finally!
Tid bit of pointless info: the actress that played the blind girl was an unknown actress until she was in this movie. she would eventually commit suicide due to the pressures of new found stardom.
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