The 1962 Pressure Point is a period piece, of its time, and of the period in which most of the action takes place, some twenty years earlier. As related in flashback, psychiatrist Sidney Poitier relates to a young colleague how he dealt with a patient who was a psychopathic racist when he was getting his start in his profession.
It as a harrowing take the elder Poitier tells, as the young criminal he has to contend with is both sympathetic (the product of a traumatic upbringing) and loathsome (he hates blacks and Jews, has strongly sadistic as well as criminal tendencies). Dr. Poitier does his best to keep a civil tongue, as his patient is smarter than he appears to be initially, and in his own way he's as sensitive as his shrink. He's just coming from the opposite end of the spectrum.
The movie, itself related in flashback, also contains flashbacks of the patient's childhood, his early years as a young man in the depths of the Depression. After he is rejected by the family of a Jewish girl who behaves sympathetically toward him he ups and joins the German American Bund. The doctor is on a couple of occasions confronted and insulted by his patient. At this time in American history the patient, sick as he was, was in a superior position in relation to his psychiatrist: he was white, he was a freer man than the shrink, and he rubs this point in mercilessly.
Although imaginatively directed by Hubert Cornfield, Pressure Point felt to me somewhat like an exploitation B picture. Well intentioned, extremely well acted,--I've never seen Poitier give a better performance--it looks cheap and underpopulated. As its subject matter was in near Sam Fuller territory, director Cornfield, no doubt aided and abetted by producer Stanley Kramer, pulled back, and the movie for the most part plays like a television drama of its time.
A miscast Bobby Darin tries hard as the young punk, always comes across as Bobby Darin trying hard to play a young punk. He deserved a A for effort. Poitier outclasses him every step of the way in the acting department. With a better actor as the punk, a Vic Morrow or a Rip Torn, this mightn't have been so easy. Overall, this is a good movie; and producer Kramer downplays the preachiness one finds in so many of his films. Cornfield's offbeat camera angles give it an at times noirish texture. No doubt hard hitting in its day, Pressure Point feels a little bland now, but I can't blame its producer or director for that. The times have changed considerably over the past fifty years. A lot of the abuse the punk spits out wasn't a million far from normal back then. His behavior was, but not his attitude.
It as a harrowing take the elder Poitier tells, as the young criminal he has to contend with is both sympathetic (the product of a traumatic upbringing) and loathsome (he hates blacks and Jews, has strongly sadistic as well as criminal tendencies). Dr. Poitier does his best to keep a civil tongue, as his patient is smarter than he appears to be initially, and in his own way he's as sensitive as his shrink. He's just coming from the opposite end of the spectrum.
The movie, itself related in flashback, also contains flashbacks of the patient's childhood, his early years as a young man in the depths of the Depression. After he is rejected by the family of a Jewish girl who behaves sympathetically toward him he ups and joins the German American Bund. The doctor is on a couple of occasions confronted and insulted by his patient. At this time in American history the patient, sick as he was, was in a superior position in relation to his psychiatrist: he was white, he was a freer man than the shrink, and he rubs this point in mercilessly.
Although imaginatively directed by Hubert Cornfield, Pressure Point felt to me somewhat like an exploitation B picture. Well intentioned, extremely well acted,--I've never seen Poitier give a better performance--it looks cheap and underpopulated. As its subject matter was in near Sam Fuller territory, director Cornfield, no doubt aided and abetted by producer Stanley Kramer, pulled back, and the movie for the most part plays like a television drama of its time.
A miscast Bobby Darin tries hard as the young punk, always comes across as Bobby Darin trying hard to play a young punk. He deserved a A for effort. Poitier outclasses him every step of the way in the acting department. With a better actor as the punk, a Vic Morrow or a Rip Torn, this mightn't have been so easy. Overall, this is a good movie; and producer Kramer downplays the preachiness one finds in so many of his films. Cornfield's offbeat camera angles give it an at times noirish texture. No doubt hard hitting in its day, Pressure Point feels a little bland now, but I can't blame its producer or director for that. The times have changed considerably over the past fifty years. A lot of the abuse the punk spits out wasn't a million far from normal back then. His behavior was, but not his attitude.