«You just can`t force people to change their hearts, Son» A Raisin in the Sun is based on the Broadway play of the same name, first staged two years before the film itself. Unusually, almost all actors who played on Broadway are involved. The play and the film tell about the problems of life of not the richest Chicago African-American family and, it would seem, a person who grew up in the post-Soviet space, this topic is not at all close. Nevertheless, from the very first minutes, watching the character of Sidney Poitier, living with his mother, sister, wife and child in a cramped apartment, on which the “big father” of the family, who has already died, but is remembered so often and so warmly, has long ago earned a “big father” of the family, but in all this a large, poor and such an ordinary Russian family, huddled in a small Khrushchevka, where no one can establish a personal space, where the child sleeps in the “living room” with mom and dad, where everyone periodically shakes each other, but still very much love each other.
The film touches on a huge number of different problems (the central of which is the formation of masculinity and a change in the value system of the main character), perhaps "Raisin in the Sun" is even saturated with themes, but hardly any of them is inappropriate. The racial prejudices of Chicagoans in the late fifties are shown with ease and satire. John Fiedler wonderfully played the awkward and slippery head of the Neighborhood Welcome Committee, who is willing to pay any money to prevent a black family from moving to a neighborhood with "hospitable" whites ("Well, now, I don't understand why you people are reacting this way!"). The stereotypes of African Americans are also not ignored: “Mom, I met a man from Nigeria, today he will come to us ... please don’t ask him if they wear clothes there in Africa.”
Theatricality is often beneficial: the sensations conveyed by a colorful musical performance at the end of the first hour are possible only in this kind of theatrical cinema. But the most dramatic, climaxing moment was played too graphically, stageically and dramatically, rather than realistically. Of course, that doesn’t negate the beauty of the cast for the other two hours of the film. I especially want to mention Claudia Manil - a theater actress, who really big roles in the cinema, which was no more. There is nothing to say about Poitiers - he is beautiful, most of the film rushes from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor, gets drunk, dances on the table and just explodes, in plastic unexpectedly reminiscent of Brando and Dean.