Sidney movie review & film summary (2022)
The doc fares greatest in its exploration of Poitier’s decades-long friendship with Harry Belafonte. The 2 met whereas working within the theater collectively, with Poitier getting his massive break whereas filling in for Belafonte one evening when he was referred to as in for a final minute shift for his day job. Hudlin does a wonderful job chronicling their friendship by these early days within the theater to their political work for civil rights within the Nineteen Sixties to their collaboration collectively in Poitier’s directorial debut “Buck and the Preacher” in 1972. Archival clips of the 2 on speak reveals just like the “Dick Cavett Present” permits their deep admiration—and playful rivalry—to shine by even many years later.
Poitier’s affect as a director is briefly explored in distinction with the Blaxploitation period movies on the identical time. Barbra Streisand explains why she, Poitier, and Newman created the manufacturing firm First Artists to be able to have extra management of their tasks. Not solely did Poitier shine as a director of comedies, he additionally made certain these working behind the scenes in his productions have been principally Black. However once more, the doc shirks exploring the extra difficult features of Poitier’s directorial output. Specifically, the various movies he directed starring Invoice Cosby.
“It’s tough if you’re carrying different folks’s desires,” Poitier tells Oprah at her forty second celebration. Herein lies the problem of telling a person like Poitier’s story. Do you print the legend or do you delve deeper into the failings? It’s a balancing act for certain, and one which Hudlin doesn’t fairly pull off.
“Sidney” works extra as an explainer for why Sidney Poitier stays such an vital determine in American historical past—not simply Hollywood historical past—than it does as a warts-and-all biography of Sidney the person. It might be too quickly for that sort of documentary about Poitier, whose affect looms massive over a Hollywood that also doesn’t have the fairness of alternative he opined some 50 years in the past.
This overview was filed from the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. “Sidney” will premiere in choose theaters and on Apple TV+ on September twenty third.
