The Contenders:
Arthur Penn: Bonnie and Clyde
Mike Nichols: The Graduate (winner)
Stanley Kramer: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Richard Brooks: In Cold Blood
Norman Jewison: In the Heat of the Night
Showing posts with label Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Show all posts
Monday, December 16, 2019
Friday, June 14, 2019
Friday, January 15, 2016
Friday, September 19, 2014
Friday, February 28, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop. 
I like it when a movie doesn’t assume that I’m stupid. I like it even better when a film gives me a collection of characters that are smart. Watching dumb people in crisis doesn’t do anything for me. Watching smart people working out a problem is inherently more interesting. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a film that gives me a lot of what I’m looking for in that respect. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to make a film about racism in 1967; in fact, all three of Sidney Poitier’s films from that year have a touch of racism in the plot. I like In the Heat of the Night for the smart decision to make the racism a two-way street. I like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner for its ability to identify racism where we don’t expect it.
This is a film that has, admittedly, aged poorly. What was a hot-button issue the year that I was born is something that is socially acceptable in all but the most backwards parts of this country and the civilized world. The racism we’re dealing with here is not the violence prevalent in so many films of this subject, but the much more nuanced topic of interracial relationships. In fact, that’s the whole plot. Here it is in a nutshell: lily-white Joey Drayton (Katharine Houghton) brings home John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) to meet her parents and tell them that they are engaged. And, of course, John Prentice is black.
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