A surprisingly well written and exceptionally well acted drama about racial issues wasn't a feel good comedy like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", or even a big budget crime drama that dealt with prejudices like "In the Heat of the Night". But it's a film that on paper could have sounded silly (and did to me when I read the plotline) but thanks to a script I found wise beyond what else I've read about it and a strong, dignified performance by Raymond St. Jacques, it's one of the best films of the 1960's that I had never heard of.
A white D. A. is having a brain transplant (pre-"Soap Dish"), with his brain going into the still living body of a black man. The white man's wife (Susan Oliver) isn't sure how she can deal with all this, even though she's supportive and goes out of her way to help St. Jacques adjust. However, his own mother cannot accept her son in a black body, and at work,. He finds conflict especially when he's assigned to defend bigoted sheriff Leslie Nielson for the murder of his black mistress. Even in the black community, there's accusations that he's still a white lawmaker whose skin happens to be black. Ain't gonna be an easy adjustment that's for sure.
So this is not as well known as the well meaning but flawed "Black Like Me" or played for laughs like "Watermelon Man", but definitely well worth seeing, especially as one of the few big screen non-blaxploitation movies not to star Sidney Poitier. Stage actors James Earl Jones and Paul Winfield hadn't made a big splash on screen yet, but St. Jacques delivers a performance as layered and dignified as anything those more well known actors did. No laughs for funny man Nielson a decade before "Airplane!". He's completely despicable here, and quite believable. Well worth the discovery for the ideas of human justice and dignity that it deals with.
A white D. A. is having a brain transplant (pre-"Soap Dish"), with his brain going into the still living body of a black man. The white man's wife (Susan Oliver) isn't sure how she can deal with all this, even though she's supportive and goes out of her way to help St. Jacques adjust. However, his own mother cannot accept her son in a black body, and at work,. He finds conflict especially when he's assigned to defend bigoted sheriff Leslie Nielson for the murder of his black mistress. Even in the black community, there's accusations that he's still a white lawmaker whose skin happens to be black. Ain't gonna be an easy adjustment that's for sure.
So this is not as well known as the well meaning but flawed "Black Like Me" or played for laughs like "Watermelon Man", but definitely well worth seeing, especially as one of the few big screen non-blaxploitation movies not to star Sidney Poitier. Stage actors James Earl Jones and Paul Winfield hadn't made a big splash on screen yet, but St. Jacques delivers a performance as layered and dignified as anything those more well known actors did. No laughs for funny man Nielson a decade before "Airplane!". He's completely despicable here, and quite believable. Well worth the discovery for the ideas of human justice and dignity that it deals with.
