On Friday, Reginald Hudlin’s documentary “Sidney” debuts on Apple TV+, after its bow at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. The film depicts the life and groundbreaking career of the pioneering Bahamian American actor Sidney Poitier, the first Black man to win an Academy Award. Produced by Oprah Winfrey and daughter Anika Poitier (among others), the film features the likes of Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Morgan Freeman, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee, Lenny Kravitz and more speaking about the incredible impact that the actor had on American film culture and on the American civil rights movement in the late 1960s, when Poitier was a major box office draw.
The portrait directed by Hudlin (“Marshall”) uses archival footage and interviews with the late Poitier as well as contemporary interviews to outline his life and career and his enduring legacy. After watching the documentary, one will no doubt want to catch some Poitier films, so here’s a selection of his career highlights available on streaming.
Poitier’s first credited role in a major film was in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s noir “No Way Out” in 1950, opposite Richard Widmark and Linda Darnell, playing an African American doctor blamed by a man for his brother’s death (rent it on all platforms). His breakout role was in Richard Brooks’ rock 'n’ roll soundtracked “Blackboard Jungle” (1955), playing a rebellious and musically talented teen at an interracial inner city school (rent it on all digital platforms). He also shined in the 1961 film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” directed by Daniel Petrie. Rent it on all digital platforms.
