HOW POITIER TRADED THE TOMATO FARM FOR THE OSCARS
SOME years ago, I asked Michael Parkinson the unoriginal old question: who would he love to have interviewed on his chat show, but never did.
Frank Sinatra came the reply, but his wife Mary was there and groaned. ‘You always say that!’ she said. ‘I wish you’d pick Sidney Poitier. That would have been much more interesting.’
Happily, Poitier (who died in January, aged 94) did give interviews, and plenty of clips pop up in Sidney (12A, 111 mins, ★★★☆), a respectful but richly enjoyable documentary produced by Oprah Winfrey (who also contributes as a talking head, along with Denzel Washington, Barbra Streisand, Halle Berry and Poitier’s many daughters). Talking of his poverty-stricken childhood in the Bahamas, where his folks were tomato farmers, Poitier recalls that he didn’t even see a car until he was in his teens.
He couldn’t read, either. But nor did he know what racial discrimination was until his parents, worried that he was hanging out with the wrong crowd, sent him to Miami, Florida.
The film chronicles his early steps as an actor (in the American Negro Theatre in New York, understudying Harry Belafonte) and then his steady transformation into an Oscar-winning movie star, as well as a figurehead in the civil rights movement.
‘Vote and the choice is yours, don’t vote and the choice is theirs,’ he counselled, in a 1960s commercial aimed at AfricanAmericans. It’s fascinating stuff.
Juniper (15A, 94 mins, ★★★☆☆), a debut feature for writer-director Matthew Saville, is about the relationship between a cantankerous, gin-quaffing elderly woman (Charlotte Rampling) and the teenage Kiwi grandson she doesn’t know until she arrives in New Zealand to recover from a badly broken leg.
It’s pretty formulaic but newcomer George Ferrier does a decent job as the boy, grieving the death of his mother and resenting the arrival of this belligerent old stranger until, predictably, they begin to bond. Rampling, as always, is terrific.
■ SIDNEY is in select cinemas and on Apple TV+. Juniper is in cinemas now.