The inspirational story of Sidney Poitier is retold in this warm and thoroughly engaging documentary from film-maker Reginald Hudlin, featuring commentary from Oprah Winfrey (the film’s producer), Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Quincy Jones, cultural critic Nelson George – and Lulu, Poitier’s costar in To Sir With Love. Most importantly, it includes a marvellous direct-to-camera raconteur performance from Poitier himself, recorded before he died in January this year. (It also includes some great archive TV material and chat-show clips, including of course appearances on Dick Cavett, without whom no documentary of this sort is possible and who surely deserves a documentary of his own.). Harry Belafonte, his great friend, ally and rival in the civil rights movement, now 95 years old, was evidently not well enough to contribute, but he too is captured in clips.
Poitier came of age in the 1960s as a pioneering African-American movie star, in an era when society was loosening up: McCarthyism was on the wane, paranoia was declining, America’s white middle classes were waking up to civil rights and he was to prove a persuasive and charming ambassador for black rights with wonderful presence, dignity and Shakespearian bearing – although oddly, he never acted in Shakespeare.
