‘Sidney’ does justice to Sidney Poitier’s remarkable life and trailblazing career
(CNN) In theory there’s only so much to be done with a celebrity biography, but when the subject is Sidney Poitier, that’s an unusually target-rich environment. “Sidney,” a documentary from director Reginald Hudlin produced by Oprah Winfrey, does the actor justice, providing context, depth and considerable warmth in chronicling his remarkable life and trailblazing career.
Counting the actor’s widow, Joanna Shimkus Poitier, and daughter Anika among its executive producers, the project is appropriately celebratory of Poitier’s accomplishments but maintains enough distance to cover the more complex aspects of his story. It includes, for example, the turn against the actor in the late 1960s conveyed by a New York Times headline that asked, “Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?,” and his years-long extramarital affair with Diahann Carroll, giving an extra layer to their scorching chemistry in a clip from “Paris Blues.”
Still, Poitier’s rise from his humble beginnings in the Bahamas, immigrating to Florida and then New York to become Hollywood’s first Black leading man, requires little embellishment, and represents one of those rare biographies where a single not-quite-two-hour movie almost doesn’t feel like enough.
Poitier stumbled into acting, where his striking looks and dignified manner allowed him to escape the pitfalls associated with those Black actors relegated to clownish or peripheral roles who preceded him. As Morgan Freeman puts it (just one of a who’s who of talent enlisted to discuss him), Poitier “never played a subservient part,” turning down a movie he objected to early in his career, when he could have used the money as his wife was about to have a baby.
Starting as a young doctor in “No Way Out” in 1950, Poitier headlined a string of movies that peaked in the ’60s, earning the Academy Award for “Lilies of the Field” and starring in a string of memorable films in 1967: Best picture winner “In the Heat of the Night,” “To Sir, With Love” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
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