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A Patch of Blue

A Patch of Blue

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $15.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very Dated.
Review: A blind girl lives a life of squalor and abuse at the hands of her racist family. When she meets the cool collected newspaper reporter she falls madly in love.

Sadly, he knows it can never be because she is blind and underage and he is black. A fact he never mentions to her

As a book, told from the girls perspective, this idea works but when presented as a movie it instead comes of like the audience and the other characters are playing a mean trick on some poor woman. While Gordon repeatedly bemoans the fact that she has been kept in darkness all her life and never taught to read or sent to school, he does nothing to provide her with the facts of the situation she is in. Instead he dances around the subject while preaching tolerance. Even in reguards to her own education she is never given the chance to make a choice or help direct her own life.

A classic in its day that just looks dated now.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very Dated.
Review: A blind girl lives a life of squalor and abuse at the hands of her racist family. When she meets the cool collected newspaper reporter she falls madly in love.

Sadly, he knows it can never be because she is blind and underage and he is black. A fact he never mentions to her

As a book, told from the girls perspective, this idea works but when presented as a movie it instead comes of like the audience and the other characters are playing a mean trick on some poor woman. While Gordon repeatedly bemoans the fact that she has been kept in darkness all her life and never taught to read or sent to school, he does nothing to provide her with the facts of the situation she is in. Instead he dances around the subject while preaching tolerance. Even in reguards to her own education she is never given the chance to make a choice or help direct her own life.

A classic in its day that just looks dated now.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Patch of Blue
Review: A true classic. I still remember it and it's 32 years later. Sidney Poitier is superb in any role. A real class act!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Journey Of Discovery
Review: An amazing Sidney Poitier makes the most of his role as Gordon, a gentle spirit who comes to the aid of Selina (played by Elizabeth Hartman), a young blind woman who spends her days sitting in the park stringing beads onto cheap imitation pearl necklaces for a meager living.

As the story develops, Gordon comes to the realization that, as much as it may feel right, he cannot be with Selina, while the blind girl continues to be drawn closer and closer to this man who has introduced her to the world outside ... one vastly different from the one-room flat she shares with her abusive mother (Shelley Winters) and her drunken grandfather.

The film intelligently deals with the prospect of not only an interracial romance but also dabbles with the subject of significant age differences between two people clearly drawn romantically to one another. There's is a romance much like ROMEO & JULIET ... two souls coming from vastly different worlds, wanting to be together, but forced apart by circumstances beyond control.

A wonderful journey of discovery for those willing to take the trip ...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Magical experience.
Review: At last a favourite film of mine issued on DVD. What a brilliant release it is. A surperb print, as they say, and the wonderful suprise bonus of Mr. Green the director telling us how this film was made. What a good idea and how informative. Should be the standard for all DVD's.

The sad part of this film however, is the sad loss of Miss Hartman. What a fantastic debut she made in this film. One just cannot help but wonder what she could have achieved had she not died so young. Mr Poitier, a favourite of mine in "In the Heat of the Night", is just perfect. Miss Winters and Wallace Ford are a brilliant match as mother and elderly father.

All in all a fantastic little gem. Well done to all concerned.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Patch of Love
Review: For any Poitier fan this is a must see movie. A Patch of Blue portrays, I believe, some of Poitier's finest work. The story is about a blind girl who has never experienced true and unconditional love and about a man who has been hardened by the intolerance of society. Together they find the beauty in this mixed up world, the protection and freedom that only genuine love could ever offer.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of my very favorite films
Review: Geez, do I love this movie. Not just because of what it is, but because of what it could have been in less capable hands. Shelley Winters is one of the great screen villains here, truly terrifying in both her cruelty and her banality. (Can anyone ever forget the slap in the face she delivers?) Elizabeth Hartman is achingly believable and touching, especially when addressing her beloved in what she thinks are appropriately romantic terms. Sidney Poitier is nicely human in a role that could have been too idealistic. The simple score is memorable, and the final sixty seconds or so have stayed with me since childhood. (In a way, it reminds me of "Cast Away" in that it presents a little something at the very end that's not explicitly defined and which confounds anyone who's not used to thinking at the movies.)

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Sufficiently moving drama
Review: Guy Green's tale of the love between a blind girl and a "coloured" man is no masterpiece, but it is sustained by two touching performances by Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman. Other characters tend to be flatly sketched and poorly acted (so Shelley Winters), existing mainly to propel the merely adequate narrative. Nevertheless, in its own way this tale is affecting, and there are a few evidences here and there of some directorial flair. The film is scored by Jerry Goldsmith, whose music is enchantingly simple.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Hollywood would never make a movie like this today. IT would have to be made on a modest budget and Hollywood doesn't think any movie is good unless it costs $100 million, like Wild, Wild West. The acting is superb, as is the beautiful film score by Jerry Goldsmith. Watching it today is sad, though, since the superb young actress, Elizabeth Hartman, killed herself a few years ago by jumping from her apartment. She was living in poverty,after suffering mental problems from the HOllywood "rat race." Shelly Winters is so vicious you want to strangle her. She's written in her memoirs how difficult it was to play the fight scenes with her blind daughter. A wonderful movie--Elizabeth Hartman's triumph. She was also starred in "The Group" and "Walking Tall."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ending different in original book
Review: I agree with most reviewers that this was an excellent film, which I have watched over and over again. All the acting is wonderful and deserving of many awards. As is true with many movies I really like, I searched out the original book on which the movie was based. It ran very true to form, they did an excellent job of adapting the book to the movie, but the happy racial ending in the movie was a change from the more realistic one in the book. Gordon arranges for Selena to go to school, but she breaks off her friendship with him when she finds out she is black. Blackness is horrible to her because she is blind and that's all she sees, plus it's the way she was raised. But all in all, one of my favorite movies.


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