Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

SnoopyStyle A prison truck in the deep south crashes. Prisoners John Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) are chained together and escape. Easy going Sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bikel) leads the posse to catch the prisoners. Capt. Frank Gibbons (Charles McGraw) is more gung ho. The two prisoners hate other on the simple racial divide.The dialog is a bit too written. The chase group tries to be comical. I like Curtis and Poitier but they don't really have the gritty anger. They're not mean enough to be criminals. This tackles the serious racial divide. Director Stanley Kramer gets on a nice run from here on. The pairing is probably a bit too nice. It's a little hard to believe them as hardened criminals. Otherwise it's a pretty good movie.

berberian00-276-69085 Before anything else I wish to stipulate here, that this writing is non-partisan one and has nothing to do with any form of racism, communism or whatsoever deviant behavior - cf., "Defiant Ones" (1958) and also less prominent remake with Carl Weathers and Robert Urich in 1986. If Stanley Kramer dared to produce this movie in 1958 and Tony Curtis (White Male Caucasian) participate in principal leading role, subsequently I don't see reason to swell 60 years later when about half of Hollywood actors are colored and Film Industry in the making depend on this people. The reason I took this small undertaking is to try (if possible) to dispel the myth of African American Culture, its boundaries and genesis, and its role in interpreting current history of USA and all English speaking people on this planet Earth. It's a fair coin, I think both Blacks and Whites should understand me."The Defiant Ones" (1958), gave Sidney Poitier his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Five years later, he won the Oscar for "Lilies of the Field" (1963), the first African American to win for a leading role. His roles in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967) and "To Sir, with Love" (1967) were for their time landmarks in the breaking down of social barriers between African Americans and Whites.I took the paragraph above as citation from IMDb. Certainly its a good place here to mention some other Black American film stars that I have remembered vividly in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - Harry Belafonte, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Yaphet Kotto, James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor (died of dementia in 2005), Eddie Murphy, etc. Those were people that single-handedly could perform and produce a good Movie for the Big Audience. There are other names that I have missed maybe, but as a rule good Films in those times were the ones that were remembered. In the 1990s already African Americans in Hollywood Films became a cliché, there were so many nominations and deserved medleys that I am not in position right now to make an appreciation.I will go further a little bit. I am a self-conscious citizen and read all kind of literature (on equal opportunity). I have books in my library on Black Racism and White Racism, the way it started in the American Southwest from the years of 1860 and on. Mass Organizations such as Ku Klux Clan appeared as reaction on the loosing Confederate side. As counter reaction the free Black Americans left their cluster Southern States and migrated internally East and West all over USA. They started to study Culturally and Physically in High Schools and Universities. They interbreed freely in marriages with Whites and casted a singular alloy of racial unity - namely, Mulattos (if you can distinguish them physically) are as good as Blond or Brunette Whites. So what's the case here? Why are we still reading pieces of literature like "We Charge Genocide" (1951) by Civil Rights Congress on pages of Wikipaedia. It's high time for reconciliation ...

oscar-35 *Spoiler/plot- 1963, A pair of 'chained at the wrist' racist inmates from a Southern prison (one white and one black that hate each other) escape from a prison truck accident on the highway and attempt to escape to freedom from a prison search party.*Special Stars- Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Claude Akins, Lon Chaney Jr. Director: Stanley Kramer *Theme- Racial hatred is made of ignorance and distrust.*Trivia/location/goofs- Shot on the Universal's hilly back-lot, roads and exterior sets.*Emotion- An enjoyable and rather interesting insight into race relations. A strong dramatic performance from Tony Curtis, getting away from his male cheesecake roles of his early Universal Studios career starting in his first role appearance in the late 50's with Universal's Jimmy Stewart film, Winchester '73.

Ilpo Hirvonen If Douglas Sirk truly was the king of melodrama, then Stanley Kramer must have been the prince. In the 1960's he made films, dealing with controversial issues: racial prejudices (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1967) and conservative Christianity vs. liberal science (Inherit the Wind, 1960). Although, both of the films were powerful cuts into the core of the American society, they were still strongly characterized by comedy. However, in the 1950's, he made even more fierce films which relayed a desolate and melancholy world view: On the Beach (1959) is a story about a group of people who have escaped to Australia from a nuclear disaster, only to wait their inevitable death. The Defiant Ones (1958) is far from the former's hopelessness but it also presents a dark world and people, without idealistic illusions. In both films, people are dissatisfied and unheroic, and only a small dose of optimism is given, not to the characters, but to us.Unlike On the Beach, The Defiant Ones was a great success. It won two Oscars and is today considered as a major American classic. It was a dive into racism that reigned America during the time but also to an important moment of transition. Old values and absolute morality were questioned as the new generation grew up and, for the first time, youth culture was born. But that's another story. In The Defiant Ones Kramer was able to approach the American society and its people without illusions or formal idealism. The story of two different men, chained together, is really a picture of lonely people stuck in their desolate existence.The visual aesthetics reinforce the film's contents which are characterized by the existentialism of the 1950's: mud, pits, ditches, wet surfaces, run-down towns and rail ways, rivers and woods. The title of the film "The Defiant Ones" indicates to the men, chained together, but it also draws a wider picture of society. The men aren't really the defiant ones but the people around them are. The muddy landscapes, and especially the scene where the men fall to a pit, relay an emotion of stagnation. There is no destiny but as if the choices of the characters are inevitable and predetermined; already in the beginning we know that no salvation or any bright future awaits them. People are lonely and that hole they try to fill with hopes and dreams. Because it is all they have. Their lives are meaningless, there is no God or deliverance for them. No higher purpose. Just unbearable loneliness.However, loneliness doesn't just characterize the lives of these two characters as it can be seen everywhere in the society: one man who helps the police dotes his life on his dogs, the woman lives without friends or a lover, and the man in the village feels more connected with the criminals than with his fellow men. People have no future, which the swamps and mud highlight, they can only dream. But optimism won't last forever. Only love can save them for a short while from complete desperation and anxiety.Even though The Defiant Ones is a desperate film it is also, paradoxically, compassionate and funny. The ending proves that there is still hope because Curtis wins over his paragon. The thesis of the film could be that racism and all intolerance are just forms of fear. But it's just one of the film's many themes as it also brilliantly depicts existentialist agony: "What a way to live: to be quiet your whole life and only make noise when you die." To the lives of the protagonists Kramer has projected his idealized picture of the world which is still marked by loneliness and darkness. He seemed to understand that there is no eternal bliss. It's a dark picture but honest.