To me, this movie is perfection.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Many movies do not hold up over the years, regardless of how well they are made, due to the times changing. But this movie tries too hard...it wants to be ground-breaking but does not want to offend the whites who are harboring their prejudices, so they try to please everyone, racist and liberals, and it comes off as entirely phony. Why make this movie at all, if you are going to cater to the racists in the end? Pinky is not a very sympathetic character and her doctor boyfriend even less so. He wants her, even after finding out she is part black, but only if she goes back to pretending she isn't. But of course, they can't end up together, because the audiences of the day wouldn't stand for it, even though the actors are both clearly white.I know the studios had to pander to the ridiculous censorship code, but I think they would have been better off not making films that so clearly are hamstrung by the "rules" of the code.Hollywood made some ridiculous movies over the years, with various white actors playing Pacific Islanders or Asians for part of the movie, only to later "discover" that they were really white, so they could have the white hero in the end. This is a kind of reverse, but comes off just as phony and stilted.Some of the acting is fine, but the script is so leaden, it hardly matters. And Jeanne Crain delivers too many of her lines from between clenched teeth in an effort to appear taut and simmering. It just looks stiff. She must know how ridiculous her casting was.I also know movie-goers of the day were used to the phony sets, but they play better in some movies than in others. This one looks as fake as can be the whole time.

I just do not get it. As much as I tried to like and understand this film called "Pinky", I just, after watching most of it along with a very good "narration", couldn't consign myself to the fact that Jeanne Crain looks anything even remotely like a black person. NO WAY! I have seen or have known black people that have a definite look of "Caucasian" in them BUT NO WAY does Mrs. Crain have an inkling of it! Hence I don't like and can't watch this film because of the "falseness" of it. What were the producers, Zanuck included, thinking? MInd you, I am a filmmaker myself and admire Kazan extremely, especially for films like "Streetcar" and "Waterfront", and I realize his momentum, power, and notoriety back then BUT still, I can't appreciate this film because of the "miss" casting of the role!

I've never wanted to watch "Pinky" because of my own prejudices.Jeanne Crain? Beautiful but mediocre actress. (The weak link, so I thought, in "A Letter to Three Wives.") A film about racial predicaments circa 1949, falling between "Imitation of Life" (Claudette Colbert, 1934) and Lana Turner's (1959) and Douglas Sirk's classic glossy tearjerker of the same title? Who cares about "Pinky?" Turns out (now that I've seen it), like most prejudices, I was wrong about everything.It's all in the story and the script, as usual."Pinky" bypasses every sudsy cliché of "Imitation of Life" in either incarnation and proceeds directly to the heart of characters far more real, and a story far more incisive, deeply conceived and developed, than Edna Ferber or Ross Hunter ever imagined.The wonderful revelation of "Pinky," among many, is that Jeanne Crain could act.Elia Kazan's acute direction elevates Crain and everybody else. Ethel Waters, Ethel Barrymore, William Lundigan? The supporting players? Flawless.Shot and lit on sound stages, "Pinky" looks completely artificial by today's naturalistic standards. In its day, the studio stylization wasn't given a second thought. Painted cycloramas, fake Spanish moss, brilliant "mood" lighting, "classic" cinematography and all.Yet you're almost immediately lost and involved in the plot, which NEVER takes you where you expect.The entrance of Ethel Barrymore's character, for her brief duration in the story, is quietly amazing. Hers is the pivotal role upon which all else hinges. She realistically underplays every moment – only once ever leaving her deathbed.Even prone, as an actress, Barrymore makes mincemeat of the rest. Not a false note nor strained effect, nothing overwrought, no begging for sympathy . . . just the character. Listen to the simple naturalistic throwaway variety in her breathing and inflections! Same for Ethel Waters. Utter, believable simplicity and economy, always in character. Watch her eyes. (Offscreen and offstage, she could be a something of a monster, according to those who worked with her, though she always piously crossed herself before entering from the wings.) William Lundigan and every other supporting actor rises to the occasion.But it's Jeanne Crain who is the revelation. She was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for this performance.Yes, she's beautiful. Yes, she's constantly artificially lit. Yes, she's photographed from all the right angles. But within those cinematic constraints of the times, she gives a truly honest, strong, intelligent and forceful performance as Pinky.As Ethel Waters' granddaughter, that's next to genetically impossible and implausible for Jeanne Crain. But she does it. You forget the "star" artifice in five minutes and she steadfastly carries the film. (Compare this to her somewhat "actory" though still delightful portrayal in "Letter to Three Wives.") "Pinky's" plot turns out to be far richer and more nuanced than the expected, "She passed for white," claptrap (still tear-duct manipulative and effective) of either version of "Imitation of Life."And no film explores to more devastating emotional effect the tragedy of race prejudice in the south than, "To Kill a Mockingbird." But "Pinky" is the adult, intelligent and perhaps best plotted, if not best scripted, of them all, because it eschews sensational interracial rape and murder ("Mockingbird") for more mundane but still heartbreaking human relationships and realistic consequences, given the period.It's a shame Jeanne Crain was never given an equal script or director to fulfill her talents.But there's "Pinky," and any actress would be proud.

Before I saw this movie I thought Pinky should have been played by a Black actress but after watching it I think seeing a White treated like a Black made a much bigger impact on White audiences that were used to, one might say calloused to, Blacks being treated badly. Poor Tom. He loved her but he just didn't get it. Pinky's life was totally outside his frame of reference and he didn't even consider that if they had children it might make his tidy plans blow up in his face.I think this movie has a subtle grasp of race relations that was a credit to the writing, acting, and directing.I wonder what happened to the characters in the oncoming civil rights struggle. The movie necessarily doesn't have a happily ever after ending because it is set firmly in reality and we know too much about future events. Today's audiences might find it ominous that only one White person, the doctor, was even marginally on her side. It would be extremely easy for a small mob to destroy everything. The ending shot with Pinky by the signpost made me feel how alone she was despite being surrounded by people.