Movie – Avatar (2009)

Believe it or not I’ve finally come to the end of my Movies with Interracial Relationships category.  And what better way to end than with a relationship that’s not only interracial, but also interspecies and interstellar?  I think just about every person on the planet has heard of the movie Avatar and odds are not bad that they have seen it, too.  It became the highest grossing film in both U.S. and world history (in today’s money; adjusted for inflation it still gets beaten by earlier films such as Gone With the Wind.)  Just about everyone agrees that it raised the bar on movie visuals.  Most everyone also agrees that this is pretty much the reason to see it.

Movie – Live and Become (2005)

Live and Become has a curious mixture of nationalities behind it.  It’s co-written and directed by Radu Mihaileanu – a Romanian man.  It’s the story of a black Christian boy pretending to be an Ethiopian Jew growing up in Israel, being raised by adoptive Moroccan Jews who speak French.  Anyone who thinks Jews are a specific race as opposed to simply being followers of a religion will probably have problems with this film.  As the opening narration explains there have been black Jews in Ethiopia for thousands of years.  In 1985 (when the movie starts) Israel is conducting rescue missions to save as many of them as they can and to bring them to Israel.  Will the people there welcome them, though?

Movie – Far from Heaven (2002)

The film Far from Heaven is set in the 1950s, but explores topics that no 1950s film would have been able to touch – homosexuality and interracial romance.  Writer/director Todd Haynes is a big fan of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul), who was in turn a big fan of Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows).  Fassbinder’s film, which I reviewed earlier for this Interracial Relationships category, was a tribute to Sirk’s melodramas from the 1950s.  And Haynes deliberately made Far from Heaven have the same look and feel of Sirk’s films, while employing some techniques from Fassbinder.  The result – a film with both Fassbinder and Sirk in its pedigree – is one almost guaranteed to make professional movie critics get all tingly in their special areas.  Here’s the thing – it’s not just a “critics’ film”; it’s well worth watching for regular people, too.

Movie – Monster’s Ball (2001)

Nowadays the film Monster’s Ball is probably best remembered for “the sex scene”.  It involved Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton and there was no Austin Powers like goofiness with objects blocking our view (unlike many films with major stars in them).  Both Berry and Thornton committed to the scene and the film.  Almost inevitably the scene was censored in the U.S. in order to get an R rating, but was released as is around the rest of the planet.  The thing is, there’s a lot more to this movie than just a sex scene.  In fact, this is the film for which Berry won the Best Actress Oscar.

Movie – When Night Is Falling (1995)

When Night Is Falling is a Canadian film from writer/director Patricia Rozema.  It features a love triangle between a white man, a white woman, and a black woman.  The two women could not be more different.  Camille (Pascale Bussieres) is a respected professor at a conservative Christian college.  Petra (Rachael Crawford) is a bohemian circus performer.  And the triangle isn’t the two fighting over Camille’s fiancé – Martin (Henry Czerny); it’s Petra trying to seduce Camille away.

Movie – The Lover (1992)

Once upon a time movie studios were able to produce serious films for adults with a minimum of teenage boy smirking or older prudish condemnation.  That era is now gone, but while it lasted it produced some good films.  The Lover is one of them.  It is based on the semi-autobiographical 1984 novel of the same name by noted French author Marguerite Duras.  The film received an Oscar nomination for its cinematography and some of the natural beauty it captured was that of the lead actor and actress.  The Lover also received six Cesar (the “French Oscar”) nominations.  In case you are allergic to subtitles, the film is presented in English.

Movie – Zebrahead (1992)

Zebrahead is a small independent film that made somewhat of a splash when it came out, but then was pretty much forgotten over the next couple of decades.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I even came across a reference to it, so if you’ve never heard of this movie you’re probably in good company.  It features some good performances by the young stars (Michael Rappaport and N’Bushe Wright), both in their first feature films.  It also features three dimensional portrayals of teenagers – something that is rare in movies.  It is the combination of the lead actors and the naturalistic presentation of teenagers that make this film worth seeking out.

Movie – The Crying Game (1992)

The film The Crying Game actually represents something unique in all my movie-watching experiences.  (No, it’s not the twist, for those who have already seen it.)  It’s that I specifically went to see this movie in the theater before it got spoiled for me.  It may be hard nowadays to imagine a time when every single film wasn’t already spoiled well in advance with social media reporting casting and storylines well before the movie is even released, but this was the way it was in 1992.  You could actually go see a movie not knowing anything more about it than what you saw in the trailer, if you even saw that.

The Crying Game was a little different in that it was making news for the fact that it had a fantastic twist in it that supposedly you wouldn’t see coming.  I decided I’d rent it right away when it came out on VHS tape, but then it went and got nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture.  (It would eventually win for Best Original Screenplay.)  I knew there was little chance of it having that kind of attention being paid to it by the press and it not getting spoiled for me.  I decided on a pre-emptive strike: I’d go see it in the theater.  To this day that is still the only time where the primary reason I bought a movie ticket was to see a movie I knew would be spoiled for me if I didn’t see it as soon as possible.  And you know what?  It was well worth it. 

Movie – Mississippi Masala (1991)

Mississippi Masala was made at a time after Denzel Washington had hit it big with 1989’s Glory, but while he still sometimes did a smaller film like The Mighty Quinn (1989), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and this one.  This was a lucky casting break for director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) because her financial backers had pulled out after Ben Kingsley declined a role in the film.  Once Washington signed on he was a big enough name to attract other backers and get the movie made.  This was a good thing because the film is now an interesting diversion from Washington’s better known big box office/action hero persona.

Movie – Purple Rain (1984)

To a lot of people nowadays the 1984 Prince film Purple Rain is probably seen as a kind of kooky snapshot of a very specific time in music – the same way some people think of Saturday Night Fever (1977).  What many of those same people tend to forget, though, is all the very popular songs that came out of both films – songs that will still get people humming, tapping, or dancing along to them.  At the time the film Purple Rain came out it was a phenomenon.  It pretty much took over popular culture for a while with both the movie and the music dominating the airwaves, and the videos dominating this new channel calling itself Music Television, or Mtv for short.  And while Prince had had a few hits prior to this, the combination of this film and the soundtrack shot him into the stratosphere.

Movie – Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Despite the year and the title, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul has nothing to do with Muhammad Ali (in case you were wondering.)  It’s a German film from writer/director/producer Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  At the center of the movie is a marriage between a 60ish white German woman and a 30-something Arab immigrant.  The two meet by chance, get married almost by accident, and then receive the collective condemnation from almost everybody they know.  This film avoids most of the clichés about this either bringing them together or driving them apart.  Instead, what has a bigger impact on their relationship and marriage is that both seem lost at where they are at this point in their lives and neither really seems to know what they want.

Movie – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner features three screen legends – Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier.  As a result, the fourth main member of the cast – Katherine Houghton – ends up getting overshadowed.  This film earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and won for Best Actress (Hepburn) and Best Original Screenplay.  This was Spencer Tracy’s very last movie and he received a nomination for Best Actor.  He died just 17 days after filming was complete.  He does a great job in the movie of playing a man who has just come face to face with his own hypocrisy.

Movie – Sayonara (1957)

Sayonara is the oldest mainstream film I can think of that is openly supportive of interracial marriage.  It garnered a lot of notice from having big star Marlon Brando as its lead and from the 10 Academy Award nominations and 4 wins it received, including Best Supporting Actor for Red Buttons and Best Supporting Actress for Miyoshi Umeki.  The latter is the first Asian performer to ever win an Oscar (not counting 1956 winner Yul Brynner who was born in the Asian part of Russia and was ¼ Russian Mongol).  This film, along with a few with similar themes that followed, is credited with loosening up Americans’ attitudes towards the concept of marrying outside your own race.

Movie – Show Boat (1936)

There have been several movie versions of the musical Show Boat, based on the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein stage musical, which was itself based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber.  The most well known movie version is the 1951 color one.  The one that is considered the best, though, is the very hard to find 1936 one.  It is on AFI’s list of the 25 Best Musicals of all time.  The 1936 version has been suppressed for several decades, partially due to controversy over the later blacklisted Paul Robeson, who performs in it, and partially due to the studio not wanting their 1951 version being outshined.  Supposedly, the 1936 version has finally been issued on DVD in the U.S. in 2014, but when I click on the IMDB link to buy it all it shows me is copies of the 1951 version.  Regardless, it is well worth your time to track down the 1936 version.

Movie – The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

Unlike my prior review – Broken Blossoms – The Bitter Tea of General Yen shows actual passion between an Asian man and a white woman.  It’s still pretty tame compared to today’s standards, but next to the very chaste relationship in Broken Blossoms it’s quite something.  In fact, it was negative reaction to the interracial relationship that was blamed for the failure of this movie.  While it was conservative zealousness that caused people to damn the film then, it’s liberal zealousness that sometimes causes people to damn it now.  Just like with Broken Blossoms the male lead in this film is played by a white man.  There is also a nightmare/sex dream where a heavy caricature of an Asian man is first seen before becoming normal (more on that in a bit).

Movie – Broken Blossoms (1919)

Director D.W. Griffith is nothing if not schizophrenic.  Just four years after making the epic The Birth of a Nation (about how the Ku Klux Klan supposedly saved America from uppity black people) he comes back with the small character study Broken Blossoms which features a very sympathetic portrayal of an Asian man and his relationship with a white girl.  Even more surprising is that this film was made right in the middle of the “Yellow Peril” scare in the U.S.  The studio wanted nothing to do with this movie.  Griffith bought the rights to it from them and Broken Blossoms became the very first film ever released by United Artists, the company Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks founded to give artists a way to get their movies released without having to bow to the powers at the big studios.  Despite what the studio thought would happen Broken Blossoms became a huge hit.

Movies with Interracial Relationships

Young Boy with Coffee – “Excuse me, I happened to be passing, and I thought you might like some coffee.”

Little Girl – “Oh, that's very nice of you, thank you.”

Young Boy with Coffee – “Cream?”

Little Girl – “No, thank you, I take it black, like my men.”

                                                – Airplane! (1980)                   

If there’s one subject in most of movie history that pretty much guaranteed controversy it was having an interracial relationship in it, especially if it was black/white.  This category won’t be restricted just to those two races, though.  There will be various combinations among the films.

And by “relationships” I don’t mean buddy movies such as Lethal Weapon, Shanghai Noon, or the like.  No, I mean relationships where two people are romantically or sexually connected to each other (at least as far as it was allowed to go for the time period the film was made.)

Because there have been so many films like this in recent years, I am going to limit this category to those movies where the relationship is a sizable or key component to the film.  This means I will be excluding movies like The Royal Tenenbaums where it is an ensemble and there just happens to be an interracial couple among the characters.

In the interest of showing how things have changed over the years I will be posting reviews of my recommended films in chronological order – oldest to newest.  I've placed the years there to give you an idea of what the range will be.  As I review the films I will come back and add the links for them here. 

Broken Blossoms (1919)

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

Show Boat (1936)

Sayonara (1957)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Purple Rain (1984)

Mississippi Masala (1991)

The Crying Game (1992)

Zebrahead (1992)

The Lover (1992)

When Night Is Falling (1995)

Monster's Ball (2001)
O (2001) - (posted July 28, 2012)

Far from Heaven (2002)

Live and Become (2005)

Avatar (2009)

On to the reviews…

Movie – O (2001)

The movie O tells the story of O – wait, let me rephrase that – O tells Shakespeare’s Othello story in a modern day high school setting.  This film has nothing to do with the novel by Pauline Reage.  O was the third such film for Julia Stiles in a three year span.  She had first done The Taming of the Shrew (as 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You) then Hamlet in 2000.  After O came out she became known as the “Shakespeare girl” for a while.  Perhaps this bothered her because she has not done a Shakespeare adaptation since.  This film was easily the most controversial of the three.