A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

Purely Joyful Movie!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I remember watching this in high school, but never really grasping it to the fullest extent. Watching it again after I've gained some life experience, and it's absolutely heart-wrenching to watch, knowing that this is something that still takes place in 2013. It really saddens me to know that we haven't evolved too far past 1961, in terms of socio-economics, racism, and even in terms of religion. One of the most touching parts of the movie for me personally, was when Beneatha tells her mother that she doesn't believe in god, and her mother's reaction. I hope that when my kids are in their 40's, they can look back at this movie and say that things have changed.

Daniel Petrie perfectly adapts Lorraine Hansberry's play about an African-American family in 1950s Chicago. We see how the desperation of their existence drives every member of the family to do rash things, and how they have to fight racism every step of the way.Watching the movie, it struck me how "A Raisin in the Sun" must have looked when it debuted on Broadway, and then in cinemas. You see, this movie depicts not only an African-American family, but also a man from Africa, who helps the sister start thinking seriously about her heritage, and so she begins saying things that I would have expected to hear from Malcolm X. Moreover, the husband (Sidney Poitier) asks the sister's friend about why he wears "faggoty-looking white shoes". By that point, how many movies had employed derogatory language, much less anything about homosexuality? Without a doubt, this has to be seen as one of the movies representing the new path that cinema was taking in the 1960s, focusing more on real-life issues than escapism. And it is definitely one that I recommend. Also starring Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, Roy Glenn, Louis Gossett, Ivan Dixon and Stephen Perry.

The tragically brief life of Lorraine Hansberry yielded a few literary gems among them A Raisin In The Sun, the first play on Broadway ever written by a black woman. Although Hansberry's childhood was a great deal more middle class than that of the Younger family who is the subject of the play, she captures the black urban experience of the civil rights era brilliantly. Some of the things written in A Raisin In The Sun were experienced by Hansberry personally, most particularly her own family's struggle to move into the white suburbs.Columbia Pictures had the good sense to hire Lorraine Hansberry to write the screenplay and convert her play which all takes place in the Younger family apartment in the south side of Chicago for the screen. There are a few brief scenes added outside the apartment. But what really holds the interest is the dialog between the four main characters in the apartment. It's a lot like Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with souls laid bare. The apartment itself almost becomes a character, a home but also the symbol of a kind of prison the Youngers want to break out of.The four main characters are Walter Younger, Jr., his wife Ruth, his sister Berneatha, and mother Lena, played by Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, and Claudia McNeil respectively who all came over from Broadway. Through McNeil's performance particularly, but the others as well, the family patriarch Walter Younger also comes alive. What has happened is that he has recently died and the family is awaiting a $10,000.00 insurance check, courtesy of his years of service with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first primarily black union to organize in the USA. Poitier is working as a chauffeur, both Dee and McNeil work and have worked as domestics, Sands is a young college student with the ideas of her time, but she's also been spoiled a whole lot. Each has their own idea of what to do with the insurance money. The conflict and what eventually does happen divides and then unites the family in the end.A Raisin In The Sun ran for 530 performances on Broadway during the 1959-60 season and earned a flock of Tony Award nominations including Best Actor for Poitier and Best Actress for McNeil. Coming out as it did during the Civil Rights era it was as timely a literary masterpiece as there ever was. When it concluded its Broadway run, film production with just about the entire cast from Broadway commenced.A couple of other players who would make their marks later on were in A Raisin In The Sun. Lou Gossett, Jr. years before his Oscar plays a young and naive college kid who is interested in Sands. But she's far more interested in Ivan Dixon who is from Nigeria way before he joined the cast of Hogan's Heroes. Though it is firmly set in the times it was written in, as drama A Raisin In The Sun is positively eternal. It's as flawless a transfer from stage to film as you'll ever see.

A raisin in the Sun is a fantastic movie, it is old but still useful. Every family should watch it because the greatest message it carries (which I don't think has been filmed this well ever) is that in a family one supports the other not only when they are doing good but also when they are at their lowest. The movie has different facets, relationship between siblings, racism, ethics (the liquor business) etc. The movie certainly swings between the feel of a movie and a stage play especially in Poitier's character. The mother role has also been performed well, almost unbending on issues related to family and ethics. Another very important message that one can pick from the movie and which might come handy for anyone at anytime is: RIGHT IS WHAT YOU CAN TELL YOUR CHILDREN. I guess this can make life lot simpler.