A certain shade of blue is the color of the sky on a cloudless summer's day. It's also the color of inner bliss and enlightenment among certain circles. And it's the color of all of that on this beautiful poster for the moving, controversial, and award-winning film A Patch of Blue, starring Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman. Hartman plays Selina D'Arcey, who is white, eighteen, and blind, and Poitier plays Gordon Ralfe—who isn't. "Made in 1965 against the backdrop of the growing civil rights movement," says Wikipedia, "the film explores racism from the perspective of 'love is blind'..." Kissing scenes between Poitier and Hartman were cut in order to allow for distribution in the South. The director, Guy Green, insisted on the movie being filmed in black and white, although color was widely used at the time. (Ted Turner successfully "colorized" it later on, but that version was only shown briefly and has not persisted.) A Patch of Blue deals, not only with racism, but other social issues as well: blindness, prostitution, domestic abuse, and rape. It's also, more importantly, about love and redemption. It's one of my favorite Sidney (with an E) movies. There were nine cases of Sidny* for Sidney* in OhioLINK, and 87 in WorldCat. (Movie poster for A Patch of Blue, from Wikipedia.)
Carol Reid
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