The Film Junkie

Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Homer Smith, a carpenter, who becomes entangled in the world of five German nuns in the middle of the Arizona desert.  Though it is a somewhat bizarre premise, the film becomes a story about modern-day miracles, and the oppressed people of America joining together to find their own faith.

Poitier’s role here is very different from his work in later films.  His three very famous 1967 films, ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?’, ‘To Sir, With Love’ and ‘In The Heat of the Night’, present a white-friendly version of a black man.  He is well-dressed, well-spoken and often more intelligent than the white people around him; the epitome of everything Will Smith’s character in 1993’s ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ imitated.

In ‘Lilies’, Poitier’s Homer certainly presents a more racially stereotypical version of a black man, but he is also somewhat more realistic of the era.  Homer is a down on his luck fellow, he thinks he has found work doing construction for the nuns, but when he finds that they are even more broke than he, he must decide what his priorities are.  It is great to see Poitier play a character who is flawed and less regal than those he is more famous for playing.  Here he is a Baptist who loves music, who befriends the Latin American workers of the area, who finds a strange bond with these nuns.  He is never violent, though he is petty.  Poitier is amazing in this film, especially when compared with his somewhat stunted later performances.

This is an entertaining and stange little film that works mainly as a piece of history, but also as a comment on immigration and the place of black men in America.

Grade: B+