Selina D'Arcey (Elizabeth Hartman) is the long suffering blind daughter of her mean-spirited prostitute mother Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters). When she was five, her father Harry got into a fight with her mother's date. Rose-Ann threw a bottle at Harry but hit Selina instead. They live with her grandpa Ole Pa in a rundown LA apartment. She yearns to spend the day in the park despite her mother's objection. She meets kindly office worker Gordon Ralfe (Sidney Poitier) who teaches the naive uneducated Selina. She doesn't know his color at first. The interracial romance causes friction. Her mother forbids it and his brother hates it. Poitier is playing the super nice black guy in this important movie. The acting is terrific. Winters is at her bombastic best. Hartman is sweet. Poitier is a bit too saintly but he needed to be for this movie to work at that time. That limits the heat in the relationship and that's the only drawback for me.
Review of A Patch of Blue
