cult film freak: HUBERT CORNFIELD DIRECTS SIDNEY POITIER IN 'PRESSURE POINT'

Written by James M. Tate / 1/10/2022 / No comments / barry gordon , bobby darin , hubert cornfield , melodrama , noir noir , peter falk , prison , sidney poitier , sixties , stanley kramer

HUBERT CORNFIELD DIRECTS SIDNEY POITIER IN 'PRESSURE POINT'

1/10/2022 | No comment

Sidney Poitier in PRESSURE POINT Year: 1962 Rating: ***

Produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Hubert Cornfield, the recently-departed acting legend Sidney Poitier starred in this psychological drama about a prison shrink batting heads with a full-blown Nazi sympathizer...

An unapologetic self-proclaimed Anti-Semitic/White Supremacist who right off the bat considers President Roosevelt (neither Jewish or black) a no-good cripple during a flashback taking up most of the screen-time, so he's... well, opposite of a registered democrat... but made in 1961 what comes across as preachy-bias now was fairly new then, and part of Kramer's usual progressive teachable-moment forte...

Bobby Darin as Patient didn't vote democrat in PRESSURE POINT

While the best scenes have the intellectual black doctor and white racist prisoner at odds discussing why Bobby Darin as Patient has so much hatred, director Cornfield — influenced by the abstract French New Wave — spends too much time with creatively-shot yet overall-distracting surreal flashbacks involving Darin as a badly parented kid (they're actually flashbacks of a flashback since Poitier tells/narrates his story to troubled present-time shrink Peter Falk)...

And while real-life crooner Darin does a good-enough job, seeming natural in a role that might have been overacted by a more logically-suited method man, child actor Barry Gordon... who looks as if Adolf Hitler and Danny Thomas morphed into a single Mr. Potato Head... is horribly miscast, taking away from those heated office scenes where Poitier displays his usual levelheaded-despite-a-rigged-game aura, which PRESSURE POINT needed more of, since, after so many visual detours, it feels like the doctor's observing the movie instead of the patient.

Sidney Poitier in PRESSURE POINT

Hideous-looking miscast Barry Gordon as Child Victim in PRESSURE POINT

Sidney Poitier in PRESSURE POINT with Peter Falk in the framing story

Share This Post :

Tags : barry gordon , bobby darin , hubert cornfield , melodrama , noir noir , peter falk , prison , sidney poitier , sixties , stanley kramer

James M. Tate

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

FAVORITES SHORTLIST

1)OTLEY 2)HELL IS A CITY 3)ROBBERY 4)THE FEARMAKERS 5)CANYON PASSAGE 6)VIOLENT SATURDAY 7)HOT CARS 8)JUNGLE STREET 9)THE CROWDED SKY 10)THE ROARING TWENTIES 11) ANATOMY OF A MURDER 12)SHARKS' TREASURE 13)SWEENEY TWO 14)RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA 15)HARDCORE 16)THE BREAK 17)WHITE HEAT 18)AL CAPONE 19)HIDDEN FEAR 20)FALLEN ANGEL 21)NIGHT CREATURES 22)THE ASPHALT JUNGLE 23)ASH WEDNESDAY 24)THE SYSTEM 25)AIR PATROL 26)THE STONE KILLER 27)EASY LIVING 28)WILLIAM CONRAD'S BRAINSTORM 29)FRENZY 30)THE MAN FROM LARAMIE 1)DANA ANDREWS 2)JAMES CAGNEY 3)STANLEY BAKER 4)MARLON BRANDO 5)CHARLES BRONSON1)VIRGINIA MAYO 2)SUE LYON 3)GENE TIERNEY 4)MERRY ANDERS 5)FAYE DUNAWAY DIRECTORS 1)JACQUES TOURNEUR 2)RICHARD FLEISCHER 3)VAL GUEST 4)STANLEY KUBRICK 5)OTTO PREMINGER 6)ORSON WELLES 7)JOHN GUILLERMAN 8)JOHN LANDIS 9)JOHN CARPENTER 10)MICHAEL WINNER