User reviews

Some stories leave you shattered. They speak to you on such a level and you identify with such intensity that by the end of the film, your nerves and emotion are raw.

Is Raisin in the Sun a play about racial prejudice? Yes indeed, an important one too. No story illustrates the ignorance of 'restricted neighborhoods' better. No film offers the ugliness of white arrogance and presumption, something that still lives and breathes in this country.

For me personally, this is also a movie about being a man.

This movie illustrates so well how men are composed. We honor the father, love the mother and protect the traditions that raised you. Mixed in with all of that and no less important, are our dreams and aspirations.

This movie teaches us, with immense power and clarity, that to be a man, to be a real man, you must never sell out your pride. Never. No matter how badly your dreams have been shattered, your pride and your manhood belong to no one. Simple, basic redemption lies within that truth.

It's an important lesson, a deep lesson, that men of today (including myself) need to remind themselves of from time to time. There is a pride within all men. It can be stubborn, it can be arrogant and it can be so full of dreams that it can lead to bitter heartbreak. But it is there, burning in all men and it's our most treasured asset.

I can't think of a contemporary play that illustrates more strongly, the struggle and rites of manhood in American culture today. How ironic and perhaps appropriate that the film is written by a woman. It is after all the women in this film who patiently wait for Walter to find himself. The love, faith and patience of the women in this film, illustrate the grace, power and importance women have in all our lives, regardless of our gender. A Raisin in the Sun, is a marvelous film and brilliant play. It is, from my perspective, an American classic and I believe one of the most underrated American plays of all time. I recommend it to any man that is struggling to find themselves or trying to recapture what is real and what is untouchable within our souls and within our dreams.

An insurance payout amplifies the tensions in a small overcrowded apartment of a three generation family. The resulting misfortune and the prejudice suffered brings them closer. One of the best films ever made, one of the best stories ever told.

When you rent A Raisin in the Sun, get ready for some seriously intense acting and a beautiful script. Usually, when a film is made of a play, one or two members of the Broadway cast are used, and the rest is filled with Hollywood names. In Daniel Petrie's adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's play, almost everyone in the 1959 original Broadway cast reprised their roles on film. And, while Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil, as well as the direction and play itself, were nominated for Tonys, the film was universally ignored at the Oscars.

In a small apartment that doesn't even have a bathroom, there lives the widowed Claudia McNeil, her son Sidney Poitier, her daughter Diana Sands, and Sidney's wife Ruby Dee. They're all dissatisfied with their lives, but each family member deals with their disappointment and frustration in different ways. Sidney throws his heart into untrustworthy schemes, Diana is studying to become a doctor to better herself, Ruby keeps her head down as she tries to get through each day, and Claudia tries to continue mothering her grown children.

Unlike most plays, A Raisin in the Sun isn't overly wordy, and not a single moment is boring. It's terribly sad, but still a bit optimistic at times, and very thought-provoking. Perhaps my favorite element, besides the superbly heart-wrenching performances of Sidney and Claudia, is the character development in the script. Every single person in the story is three-dimensional, and no one is a villain or a saint. Audiences can understand their thought-processes and motivations, and it's nearly impossible to choose a favorite character. Depending on how well you handle sad stories, this might be a staple you add to your collection, or it might be a film you watch only once but remember forever.

"A Raisin in the Sun" is one of the finest American films ever made. This film discusses many vital issues, such as racism, abortion, trust, family values, greed, and even atheism.

My favorite character in this film is matriarch Lena Younger, impeccably performed by Claudia McNeil. Mrs. Younger is a wise, loving mother and grandmother to her family. While she may not always agree with her children's decisions, she never stops loving them.

Sidney Poitier is brilliant as the defeated Walter Lee Younger. Walter is frustrated with his job as a chauffeur, and believes he has more to offer the world.

Ruby Dee is great as Walter's supportive and level headed wife.

The dialogue and issues that are discussed reinstate the values upon which America was built. I strongly recommend this excellent film.

"A Raisin in the Sun" presents powerful acting performances from Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Claudia MacNeil. I was deeply engaged throughout the film due to the fine presence of the characters and meaningful dialogue. The conversations between the members in the Younger family reveal not only their unique personalities and dreams, but also, the complex nature of their relationships and the deep personal issues within each of them. Someone once said, "pride is a dangerous thing" and this film beautifully illustrates the consequences of pride. In my opinion, this is one of Poitier's finest moments in film but, more importantly, I believe this story offers a lesson to all of us, regardless of race, about love and pride. It is truly a classic film.

Sidney Poitier's A Raisin in the Sun exceeded my high hopes. Easily a 10/10 film, it is so very touching and uplifting with great characters and great performances. Humorous, too! This film delivers in a major way.

Ideally, a film should have something intelligent to say about life, about reality. A Raisin in the Sun is such a film and more. So, if the reality of human life in general interests you, consider yourself well-advised to watch this powerful film. I have little doubt that you will enjoy it.

It is, as of this posting, number 34 on my top 250.

The actors in this movie are great actors. That could be said for every one of them. They all knew exactly what to do with the script from their previous work on the stage play version. Unfortunately, when their face is blown up 10 times on the big screen, so are their actions, and some scenes, because of this, come off a little too over the top dramatic than they should be realistically. The story is a simple one, but actually pretty interesting, and most of the time this is entertaining to watch.

The Younger family has just lost a member. Lena "Momma" Younger's (Claudia McNeil) husband died, and because of this the government is giving the family 10,000 dollars. Momma wants to buy a house and move the family out of their tiny apartment into a nice white neighborhood. Walter (Sidney Potier) has the dream of taking the money to start a liquor store. Beneatha (Diana Sands) wants to go to college on this money. The family has problems, and though no real plot is apparent, the characters make the film.

The direction on this is great. The music only adds to it, and helps out greatly in scenes trying to be dramatic. The actors play the scenes off well usually, though as stated earlier, a few times they almost come off campy instead of serious and dramatic. Most of the time this wasn't the case though, and these actor's performances shouldn't be nitpicked like I'm doing, and most won't even notice the over the top goofiness. The writing is very good, and is straight out of the play. The entertainment value is high, though some scenes seem to drag, another better scene generally follows.

Overall, this is not a masterpiece. The play is good, the acting is great, the cheese level is fairly low, and Raisin has a true human touch to it that makes the audience feel for these poor characters, and it's a very hard trait to emulate.

My rating: *** out of ****. 120 mins. PG for violence.

My applause goes to director, Daniel Petrie, for a masterpiece movie that concentrated on one set of a black family's small apartment, in the projects of Chicago. This movie shows every hardship that black families went through in the fifties. A Raisin in the Sun movie is a remake of Lorraine Hansberry's classic stage play of how a black family tries to escape from their crowded apartment life to a house in an all white neighborhood. Sidney Politer delivered his usual outstanding performance in this film, which sends a message about the limited opportunities open to blacks in this time period. My favorite character was Mama, played by Claudia McNeil. She did an excellent job showing how the mother is always the backbone of black families through every trial and tribulation. I am not usually a fan of black and white movies, but this movie displayed a wonderful storyline for me to understand the struggle they went through. There was never a movie that I can think of that was this excellent with one set most of the movie and was in black and white. The part of the movie that meant a lot to me is how Mama took the money she received and did something with it that would benefit the whole family. Overall, each main character portrayed a strong black person. For example, Walter Lee realized that he is suppose to follow behind his father and be a strong black man and raise a family. Ruth always stood by her husband no matter his wrongs, Beneatha was a young black student going to college to be doctor and Mama was just their for any of her family member's and remain strong for everyone.

...I found the acting to be somewhat "over-the-top". Also, the story could have been condensed a bit; it seems to go on too long for what was/is essentially a stage-play. The movie is over 2 hours in length. The story is quite good (but long) at telling what life was like in the 50's, for a well-educated black family, trying to make their life better.

The Younger family are a working class black family with three generations, five people, living in a cramped apartment. However, it appears their fortunes are about to change as grandmother Younger is about to receive a large insurance payout. However, there is considerable disagreement within the household on how the money will be spent, resulting in friction within the Younger family.

Powerful and profound, but takes forever to make its point - overwrought and unnecessarily protracted. The ultimate theme is very admirable, and very necessary, especially in the 1960s. Well set up too, in getting to the punchline.

Too well set up. You have to wait for about 90 minutes for anything like a degree of focus or for a payoff for everything that came before. Until then the movie seemed to drift.

Worst of all, the dialogue is incredibly padded. The writer's reasoning seemed to be - why use 10 words when 100 will do? Every bit of dialogue is long-winded and feels like a speech, enough to make even Shakespeare seem succinct. So many times I caught myself thinking "Geez, just get to the point!".

Some brevity and this would have been a superb movie. Instead it is a bit of an ordeal, with a good payoff at the end.

Yeah, there are some corny platitudes in this one, and it's a deliberately forced, theatrical melodrama. Not only that but you might be constantly distracted by Claudia McNeil's resemblance to the boxer James Toney.

However, the intentionally set-bound, stage-like work contains a mesmerising intensity throughout, an almost uncomfortable two hours of naked emotion on screen.

Cinematography and cast are both pretty much first-rate in a screenplay that seems to have one too many points to make, but manages to tie them all together by the film's end.

I guess it's the fate of most cutting-edge social-commentary contemporary drama, be it in theatre or film, to become dated almost immediately after it appears. Although on rare occasions some can transcend their era, such as "To Kill A Mockingbird", they can often only be looked at today as snap-shots of society, the way it was or the way we were. The other things they can reflect are differences in style and representation. I have to say that for me, this in some ways admirable movie, fails both tests.

The story is simple - a poor black family comprising the almost stereotypical God-fearing matriarch, her ambitious, socially-aware young daughter and embittered 35-year-old son and his wearied wife and young son all live together in a cramped Chicago apartment. The father has just died and his life insurance cheque of $10000 is due to the mother the next day but what to do with it? She herself wants to buy a bigger house where they can all live, the son wants to go into business with two of his drinking pals and the younger daughter needs the money to go through medical school and qualify as a doctor.

As fate would have it, the son's wife has just learned she's pregnant and is considering having an abortion, while the daughter is being courted by two different black men, one a quiet, conventional college-type, the other an intellectual, self-aware Afro-American looking to convert her to radicalism. As they all in their own ways follow the money, disaster looms and just-under-the-surface family tensions are ignited raising the question as to whether the family will tear itself apart only for a bigger societal concern to make its ugly entrance and reunite the family at the movie's climax.

There's no question the film's heart is in the right place but quite apart from it never escaping its theatrical moorings, I didn't really connect with the issues of assimilation and identity as personified in the daughter figure and her choice between her very different suitors.

I also wasn't impressed by the boorishness and selfishness of the son, pleading and almost demanding his old mamma give up her new money to him while the figure of the censorious, Bible-punching old mother for me veered too close to Mammy-type caricature.

The plot skirts around other big subjects of family, birthright and abortion before arriving at the defining topic of discrimination which brings the family back together but on the whole I found the piece to be too driven by a series of unfortunate events and the conclusion rather pat and contrived.

As for the acting, I'm normally a fan of Sidney Poitier but found his work here to be too mannered, not to say physical. His conflict with Claudia McNeil whose sanctimonious bearing I found pretty wearing after a while, tended to dominate the action and both correspondingly act as if they're in competition with each other. This unfortunately doesn't leave much time or space for Ruby Dee as Poitier's rather downtrodden wife or Diana Sands as the impressionable daughter, to project their respective characters.

In the end I found the situations conveyed to be too artificially contrived, the dialogue too unnatural and the acting too overplayed to really move me the way great drama should.

And it's a pity that a work that turns into something of a crusade for racial equality should elsewhere resort to cheap, offensive and unnecessary homophobic name-calling directed at one of the minor characters.

I watch this film with my children, to show them that although there are no special effects, no explicit sex scences, and very little profane language this is a movie that GRABS you from beginning to end. It breaks beyond race and color, it is about HUMANITY. Sidney and Ruby are BRILLIANT in this film, but the accolades belong to the grandmother. She is the ROCK that holds everything together. I urge everyone to watch this movie. EVERYTIME I WATCH IT I CRY.

The tragically brief life of Lorraine Hansberry yielded a few literary gems among them A Raisin In The Sun, the first play on Broadway ever written by a black woman. Although Hansberry's childhood was a great deal more middle class than that of the Younger family who is the subject of the play, she captures the black urban experience of the civil rights era brilliantly. Some of the things written in A Raisin In The Sun were experienced by Hansberry personally, most particularly her own family's struggle to move into the white suburbs.

Columbia Pictures had the good sense to hire Lorraine Hansberry to write the screenplay and convert her play which all takes place in the Younger family apartment in the south side of Chicago for the screen. There are a few brief scenes added outside the apartment. But what really holds the interest is the dialog between the four main characters in the apartment. It's a lot like Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with souls laid bare. The apartment itself almost becomes a character, a home but also the symbol of a kind of prison the Youngers want to break out of.

The four main characters are Walter Younger, Jr., his wife Ruth, his sister Berneatha, and mother Lena, played by Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, and Claudia McNeil respectively who all came over from Broadway. Through McNeil's performance particularly, but the others as well, the family patriarch Walter Younger also comes alive. What has happened is that he has recently died and the family is awaiting a $10,000.00 insurance check, courtesy of his years of service with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first primarily black union to organize in the USA.

Poitier is working as a chauffeur, both Dee and McNeil work and have worked as domestics, Sands is a young college student with the ideas of her time, but she's also been spoiled a whole lot. Each has their own idea of what to do with the insurance money. The conflict and what eventually does happen divides and then unites the family in the end.

A Raisin In The Sun ran for 530 performances on Broadway during the 1959-60 season and earned a flock of Tony Award nominations including Best Actor for Poitier and Best Actress for McNeil. Coming out as it did during the Civil Rights era it was as timely a literary masterpiece as there ever was. When it concluded its Broadway run, film production with just about the entire cast from Broadway commenced.

A couple of other players who would make their marks later on were in A Raisin In The Sun. Lou Gossett, Jr. years before his Oscar plays a young and naive college kid who is interested in Sands. But she's far more interested in Ivan Dixon who is from Nigeria way before he joined the cast of Hogan's Heroes.

Though it is firmly set in the times it was written in, as drama A Raisin In The Sun is positively eternal. It's as flawless a transfer from stage to film as you'll ever see.

The American dream,and the loss of it, this film is relevant on many levels, dealing with financial strife,racism,dis-equity among working classes.It is more relevant even today, as people in America are seeing their houses devalued,loss of once stable jobs,and the struggle to endure.

Claudia McNair is simply superb as the grandmother, and glue which holds the family together. Sidney Poitier is Walter Lee, who is stocking all of his hopes in the 10,000.00 his mother is getting, from the deceased fathers life insurance policy.

Beneatha is the younger sister, attending premed in college with her own dreams and aspirations, which her mother and sister-in-law Ruth (superb performance by Ruby Dee), have difficulty understanding. A related scene when they burst out laughing as Beneatha takes up yet another hobby to express herself,the women's issues that were at the forefront during the 1950's and 1960's are evinced, as well as the racism issues,and unequal treatment.

An odious role with John Fiedler as a racist member of the Klyburn Park Homeowners Association,trying to pay off the family to not purchase a house in his neighborhood.

Overall excellent performance by Poitier as a young man trying to make his mark in a hostile society,this film is classic,must see.10/10.

Brilliant performances all around. Amazing how far ahead this movie must have been in 1961. Watching it now it boggles my mind that these issues made it to cinema.

Poiter is GOD and has such a stage presence that it is no wonder he is such a gifted actor. Truly Brilliant film.

Rating 10 out of 10

Walter Lee Younger (Sidney Poitier) is a chauffeur feeling under the thumb of the ladies in his life. His wife Ruth (Ruby Dee) is pregnant and considering an abortion. His mother and sister Beneatha are also living with them in their apartment in Chicago's south side. His father is recently deceased and his mama is expecting a large insurance cheque. Walter expects to use the money to buy a liquor store but his mother has other thoughts. His sister wants to pay for her education. She has a fight with mama over religion. She brings home Nigerian Asagai who introduces her to Nigerian culture. Her integrated boyfriend George Murchison (Louis Gossett Jr.) is dismissive of any old world culture. Mama buys a house in a white neighborhood to try to pull the family back together. Mark Lindner comes to offer to buy it back to avoid racial tension.

This is an important black play and an important black movie. There are a lot of family conflicts in this story. Some of it feels like piling on especially the abortion question. I would like a more simple argument about money. I am also not impressed with Sidney Poitier. He's being whiny. Maybe he is intended to be whiny but it would be better as frustrated anger. For me, the standout is Claudia McNeil playing the mother. She is both powerful and powerless over her children. She is playing on several different levels. The sister also feels whiny but she's younger and it fits more than her brother. There are some interesting work here and an important message in the end.

I watched this today, and was so impressed I had to share my thoughts on it. Firstly, I love Poitier, and own many of his films from his incredible run of the 60's. He may have won the Oscar for Lilies of the Field, but I always thought he was better in quite a few other movies, and now this one joins them. In fact, I think in this film he was much, much better. And it's also interesting in that Walter Lee is a flawed character, in some ways. In some other movies Poitier's almost too perfect.

The supporting cast are incredible too. Claudia McNeil should have at least received a nomination for best supporting actress, And Ruby Dee... I can't get over how young and pretty she is, having only ever seen her playing mothers and grandmas up to now. Watching this, I kept thinking of another play turned movie, A Streetcar Named Desire. While Raisin is no Streetcar, it is a similarly powerful, moving piece of work and acting masterclass.

Is this movie a classic because it's got black people in it? I watched this and what I saw was over-acting by Portier. His mannerism was always so as-a-matter-of-fact when he spoke to others. He spoke at them, as if his words were so important, but much of the time he put an emphasis on things that were petty. It was complete over-acting.

In the beginning of the movie, he got out of bed like nobody I've ever seen get out of bed, acting tired, walking to the kitchen like he was about to fall over. I don't know if he's trying to be funny, or if he thinks people really do that, but it was overkill.

The whole scene in the kitchen after that was what I meant above, when it seemed like he was making a big deal out of nothing. Going on and on.

The subject-matter was not something that only black people experience and I didn't really see how this film was so insightful into the lives (behind closed doors) of how black lives are IRL.

It's a movie script based on a play.

What I think is - back in the day - there weren't a lot of black actors, or films focusing on the lives of black people. So maybe this was a great step forward for minority actors.

In that sense, maybe this paved the way for other black actors, but that doesn't make this a great film. There wasn't anything spectacular in terms of film-making or even acting. In fact, I would argue that the acting was less than average.

Hypothetically speaking, what if this was a white family's dilemma? I bet most critics would have called this boring.

I'll watch it again someday, but I'm not in a hurry. I'd rather watch Shawshank Redemption for the 396th time.