A Patch of Blue

Media:	DVD
Directed by:	Guy Green
Starring:	Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters, Elizabeth Hartman
Release date:	04 February, 2003
List price:	~~$19.98~~
Our price:	$16.46 that is 18% off!

A Patch of Blue

Average rating: Stars

Goldsmith's "Mockingbird"

Jerry Goldsmith's splendid score for this touching, senitmental movie treasure remains one of my personal favorites. He deservedily earned his second Oscar nomination for this charming and emotional work that has been given superb attention to detail with the restored music contained on the Intrada CD reissue--yet another masterwork of the Goldsmith legacy. As with the original Mainstream pressing LPs of "The Trouble With Angels" and "The Blue Max", I find myself going back to listen to the original LP and experiencing the thrill of my earliest days as a soundtrack collector. [filmfactsman]

A Patch of Blue - Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters and more

A patch of black

Parental neglect robs juvenile Selina of true love and a moral foudation in childhood. One day she stumbles upon a patch of black (Gordon) largely different from the darkness with which she is accustomed to growing up blind. He describes for her a new world with blue skies, education, purpose, and love. She mistakes his concern and friendship for carnal love which makes Gordon's challenge to assist all the more difficult, especially considering the racial divide of the time.

Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters and more - A Patch of Blue

Green and "Blue"

Astoundingly enough, director Guy Green is still with us and at age 92 his memories of making A PATCH OF BLUE are still crisp, almost visionary. Usually I skip DVD commentary by directors and crew, preferring just to experience the picture without someone yakking off screen, but here it is worth a second viewing to understand the frustrations and finally the rewards Green (and producer Pandro Berman) faced in filming the novel, BE READY WITH BELLS AND DRUMS by Elizabeth Kata. Though set in the deep South, BE READY was written by an Australian author who had never set foot in the USA!

She did a great job, but Green and Berman shelved the depressing vigilance ending of the novel and tried to tailor it for Sidney Poitier's personality. At the time that screen image was of the perfect man who just happened to be black. Kindly, radiantly handsome, strong, athletic, musical, a genius, Poitier's image was carved in stone at this point. His interest in little Selena is painted as the gesture of a great human being for one of the poor unfortunate ones. In return Elizabeth Hartman gives it all she's got. I was reminded often of the scenes in Chaplin's City Lights, where the Little Tramp falls in love with a blind girl and hustles like mad to earn enough money to finance an operation that will cure her but which will inevitably destroy her love for him once she sees what he actually looks like!

Green also directed three US movies in the following years, none of which have arrived yet on DVD, and barely even on video, but all of them worthy of DVD treatment (hopefully with his memories attached): PRETTY POLLY with Hayley Mills, ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH with Melina Mercouri, David Janssen and Alexis Smith, and the incredible THE MAGUS, which is like BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS taken straight. Release them at once, film czars!