Best movie of this year hands down!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A Patch of Blue is one of my favorite classic movies. There are so many wonderful elements to the film: a tragic script, fantastic acting, family tensions, a beautiful romance, suspense, humor, social commentary, fitting music, and above all, heart. There's so much heart in this film it'll be impossible for you to remain dry-eyed. But, although it is a heavy drama, it's not so upsetting you won't want to watch it over and over. I've seen it over a dozen times and I still haven't had my fill.Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Hartman made her film debut as the lead in A Patch of Blue, and she was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars in 1966. It was a terribly competitive year, with Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music and Julie Christie in Darling as her main competition. I'll leave it to you to pick the most deserving performance of the three, but it's a very tough decision. I would have given the gold to Elizabeth.Elizabeth plays a young blind girl, and to make her eyes look sufficiently damaged to the audience, she wore special contacts—but they actually interfered with her ability to see clearly! She lives with her crass and cruel mother Shelley Winters, and Shelley's alcoholic father Wallace Ford. Elizabeth is constantly verbally abused, and she believes the insults her mother flings at her, so she sees no problem with acting as the housekeeper, cook, and laundress, even though she's unappreciated. She also strings beads, which bring in a meager side income for the household, and on sunny days, Wallace Ford takes her to the park so she can enjoy the fresh air while working. One day, she meets a kind man, and a slow friendship builds.Sidney Poitier plays the nice man in the park. Elizabeth is extremely ignorant, and as she and Sidney become friends, he helps educate her, from correcting her grammar to helping her survive better in her blind world. If you don't fall in love with Sidney Poitier after watching A Patch of Blue, you must have lousy taste. He's so incredibly sweet and kind, but he's also reserved because he suspects if Elizabeth knew the color of his skin, she wouldn't want to associate with him anymore.Shelley Winters, in her own unique brashness that makes her utterly unlikable yet fascinating to watch, plays an ignorant, racist woman so convincingly, it'll be tough to believe her in any other role if you've never seen her before. You might want to try A Place in the Sun or Night of the Hunter to see her in a softer role first before this harsh character becomes etched in your mind. She won an Oscar for her performance, but Sidney Poitier wasn't even nominated. Maybe the Academy wasn't ready to honor an interracial romance; in some Southern states, some of the scenes were cut from the theatrical screenings.I can't stress enough how wonderful this film is. If you've ever felt alone in the world and ached for just a small gesture of kindness, you'll love it. If you're a hopeless romantic, you'll love it. If you appreciate movies with fantastic acting, or are a Sidney Poitier fan, or are looking for a new celebrity boyfriend, you'll love it. Just watch it. You'll love it.

It's wonderful to have a friend...Great, incredibly moving story. A story of neglect and caring, and how friendship spans divides of race and ability. Incredibly suffocating at times, as you feel for Selina's (the blind girl's) plight, how incredibly abusive and neglectful her mother and grandfather are, and how they have left her disadvantaged. This pressure us palpably relieved every time she is with Gordon. The difference is so stark it is beautiful and moving.There are also touches of commentary on racial issues but these are mostly left as a secondary plot. Thankfully so. While the commentary was justified and relevant, making more of it would have detracted from the main story.Sidney Poitier gives his usual solid, polished performance in the lead role. The stand-out performance, however, is Elizabeth Hartman as Selina. So convincing I thought she was actually blind (she isn't). Well-deserved her Best Actress Oscar nomination and unlucky not to win the award.Shelley Winters got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Rose-Ann, the evil mother. A good performance from her, playing parental neglect personified.A must-see.

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.

Continuing the reviews of African-Americans in film in chronological order for Black History Month, we're now at 1965 when Sidney Poitier stars as Gordon Ralfe in this movie about his mentoring a poor blind young woman whom he meets one day when she comes to the park for the first time. Her name is Selina D'Arcey (Elizabeth Hartman) and she has had to endure an abusive relationship with her mother Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) and an alcoholic grandfather known as Old Pa (Wallace Ford). When she comes with Gordon to his apartment, his brother Mark (Ivan Dixon) warns him about the ramifications if anyone sees them though Gordon doesn't think he's that serious about her. I'll stop there and just say this was a very touching story handled sensitively by Poitier and Ms. Hartman. And Ms. Winters deserves her Oscar for making Rose-Ann such a hard woman to like though occasionally she does provide some humorous moments too. And after previously seeing Dixon as both Joseph Asagai in Poitier's A Raisin in the Sun and Duff Anderson in Nothing But a Man, he gives another fine performance here especially when he and Poitier are discussing the pros and cons of what Ms. Hartman's presence means in their apartment. One more thing I'd like to praise is Jerry Goldsmith's score. Such beautiful music! So on that note, A Patch of Blue is highly recommended.