This is another film I missed out on countless times over the years before acquiring it, and I now chose to watch it during this year's Oscar season, since it emerged the winner of the Best Supporting Actress statuette for Shelley Winters' typically raucous performance; interestingly, though billed after her, Elizabeth Hartman was nominated in the Best Actress category (but she is clearly the protagonist here, even more so than nominal lead Sidney Poitier)! While it received three other well-deserved nods for Robert Burks' expressive cinematography (in monochrome and widescreen), Jerry Goldsmith's beautiful score (perhaps more than the movie was worthy of!) and the art direction/set decoration, it is telling that this fared rather better at the Golden Globes (despite Winters herself not being nominated!) – where Hartman won for Most Promising Newcomer and the picture itself, Poitier and Guy Green for both script and direction also got recognition.
The narrative involves an uneducated blind girl (also emotionally abused by her mother and perennially drunk grandfather Wallace Ford) being befriended by an erudite black man she meets at the park. While he consciously keeps a step back, knowing his colour might ultimately prove a problem to their relationship, she falls hard for him since no such attention was ever lended to her before (other than by a black girl friend, whom she was then prevented from seeing anymore by her slutty, racist mom). Flashbacks are effectively interspersed portraying the heroine's sexual assault by a client of her mother's and the tragic childhood accident (caused by Winters herself) that left Hartman deprived of her eyesight. As can be gleaned from this plot line, the film is melodrama with all the stops out – yet the handling is reasonably sensitive throughout, especially in Poitier's patient nurturing of Hartman, which eventually sees her attain independence and even enlist for proper schooling; for the actor, this was something of a dry run for the more popular GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967).
Following a distinguished career as a cinematographer (being rewarded with an Oscar for lensing David Lean's GREAT EXPECTATIONS {1946}), Green's directorial output started off modestly but gradually grew in stature and respect; he demonstrated a particular affinity with 'social problem' dramas: apart from the film under review (typical of this era in cinema, the meaning of its retitling from the source material is only casually referenced!), he dealt with the stigmas society places on being a sex offender and mental health in THE MARK (1961) and LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA (1962; another movie I ought to get down and watch one of these days) respectively.
The narrative involves an uneducated blind girl (also emotionally abused by her mother and perennially drunk grandfather Wallace Ford) being befriended by an erudite black man she meets at the park. While he consciously keeps a step back, knowing his colour might ultimately prove a problem to their relationship, she falls hard for him since no such attention was ever lended to her before (other than by a black girl friend, whom she was then prevented from seeing anymore by her slutty, racist mom). Flashbacks are effectively interspersed portraying the heroine's sexual assault by a client of her mother's and the tragic childhood accident (caused by Winters herself) that left Hartman deprived of her eyesight. As can be gleaned from this plot line, the film is melodrama with all the stops out – yet the handling is reasonably sensitive throughout, especially in Poitier's patient nurturing of Hartman, which eventually sees her attain independence and even enlist for proper schooling; for the actor, this was something of a dry run for the more popular GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967).
Following a distinguished career as a cinematographer (being rewarded with an Oscar for lensing David Lean's GREAT EXPECTATIONS {1946}), Green's directorial output started off modestly but gradually grew in stature and respect; he demonstrated a particular affinity with 'social problem' dramas: apart from the film under review (typical of this era in cinema, the meaning of its retitling from the source material is only casually referenced!), he dealt with the stigmas society places on being a sex offender and mental health in THE MARK (1961) and LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA (1962; another movie I ought to get down and watch one of these days) respectively.