Sherry Chandler » A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun
For some reason, I had not seen the 1961 release of A Raisin in the Sun. I’m not sure why but I’d guess it was because I was sixteen years old when it was released, living in deep country a two-hour drive from any walk-in theater, and focussed on the burning issues that preoccupy most sixteen-year-olds.
And somehow, over the years, I did not go back and pick it up.
My loss.
The film has not dated. For good or ill, the issues it raises are still relevant. Some of them are timeless and applicable to those of any race who live in poverty.
The performances are gripping. Sidney Poitier’s is surprisingly athletic. For some reason I hadn’t thought of him as an athletic performer. In part, I think that’s because he belongs to an older generation of actors for whom physicality was more subtle.
For the most part, the film keeps to the single room set that the play uses but it really doesn’t seem like a filmed play. In part, I think this comes from the vitality of the performers and in part from smart camera work. But also, as my son observes, it is necessary that the play stay in the single room of the Chicago tenement apartment so that we can get the feel of just how cramped and hemmed in the Younger family is.
A plot synopsis here.
I have to tell you that I cried like a baby watching it, and I think there were some male eyes in the room that weren’t quite dry.
Lorraine Hansberry wrote this play out of some very bitter experiences in her own childhood:
“25 years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nation’s ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house… My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white supremacy in America include being spat at, cursed and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. And I also remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our household all night with a loaded German [L]uger [pistol], doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court.”
All of this is in the future for the play’s Younger family. The play ends with their decision to move into the all-white neighborhood in spite of the offer to buy them out and in the full knowledge that they won’t be welcomes. I am impressed by Hansberry’s ability to work out of this personal bitterness to produce a play that is at base positive and expansive.
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