Lilies of the Field (1963) + For Love of Ivy (1968) – DVDs

LILIES OF THE FIELD
*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Stanley Adams
screenplay by James Poe, based on the novel by William E. Barrett
directed by Ralph Nelson

FOR LOVE OF IVY
*/**** Image A Sound A
starring Sidney Poitier, Abbey Lincoln, Beau Bridges, Nan Martin
screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur, based on a story by Sidney Poitier
directed by Daniel Mann

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Two steps forward, one step back. It's hard to know how to read the career of Sidney Poitier, who was America's premier black actor during the '60s and is often held up as a standard bearer for those trying to break through Hollywood's white ceiling. Is he a figure of uncommon dignity in an industry that trafficked in insulting stereotypes, or is he the "nice" black man-made palatable to a white audience eager to flatter itself for its liberalism? The answer is a complex one, requiring an examination of his films–two of which have recently been reissued on DVD. Both Lilies of the Field and For Love of Ivy are tedious, uncontroversial filmmaking, but they afford an interesting glimpse into the compromised mind of liberal Hollywood when faced with the task of "integrating" its product.

Lilies of the Field features Poitier as Homer Smith, an itinerant worker wending his way across the American West when his car overheats and he pulls over to the first building he sees. Little does he know what fate has in store for him: he's landed at the farm of some impoverished Eastern European nuns, headed by an implacable Mother Superior (Lilia Skala) who believes quite fervently that Homer has been sent by God to build them a chapel. Homer is at first skeptical, not to mention a little annoyed that the initial work he does for them happens without pay, but through some bizarre Catholic tractor beam he stays on and is slowly transformed into a chapel-building dynamo. Soon he is marshalling the efforts of a local construction firm and finally getting the churchless congregation to help complete the building–because, really, who says no to nuns this cute?

All kidding aside, Lilies of the Field offers a typical cake-having/cake-eating Hollywood liberal scenario, allowing its black protagonist to look noble while at the same time making him infinitely servile. On the one hand, there is no saying that Poitier is a stereotype: what another time would have made of a restless black drifter is not acknowledged here, and as the star/protagonist is generally the centre of attention, there's no obvious sign of discrimination. He's also a font of much of the film's good, going out of his way to help his clerical benefactors. He even gets most of the film's good lines (such as they are), which render Homer by far the most sympathetic character in the piece. So this could very easily position Poitier as the challenge to stereotypes he seems to be in his best moments.

Yet the audience is not really challenged–Poitier's role is the vessel of someone else's directives. Not only does he never receive payment for his Herculean efforts on behalf of the chapel, he also appears to be trapped by mysterious forces conspiring against his own free will, blunting his effectiveness as a character. And as Poitier is the only black person in the entire cast, he's a total outsider, not a pack of rebels, thus he leaves the pecking order strangely, reassuringly intact. Mostly Homer is there to entertain the nuns (this was the Sixties, when nuns were still cute), teaching them bits of English and the odd gospel tune (curses to Jerry Goldsmith for repeating it ad infinitum on the soundtrack) and generally getting nothing in return. By the film's logic, a "noble" black is a totally self-denying one–hardly the last word in racial equality.

Based on an idea by Poitier himself, For Love of Ivy introduces an entirely different set of racial variables. Here, a domestic in the white, affluent Austin household named Ivy Moore (Abbey Lincoln) decides after years of faithful service that she wants to move into the city. Needless to say, this comes as a shock to the family she serves–they consider her, ahem, "one of the family" and desperately want to keep her. This leads dirty hippie son Tim Austin (Beau Bridges) to hatch a plan: he will enlist shady transport king Jack Parks (Poitier) to romance her in order to distract her from changing careers. Parks, who runs a gambling operation out of one of his trucks, is all business at first, alternately impressing and alarming the unworldly Ivy, but soon he falls for her–just as she gets hip to the ruse and rejects him. Will there be reconciliation?

Unlike Lilies of the Field, For Love of Ivy doesn't knock itself out making the black characters "worthy." In fact, they can only come up smelling like roses next to the scheming Austin clan, thoughtless in their willingness to sacrifice Ivy's happiness for their own–even Jack's second career as a gambling lord leaves him on a higher plane than these jerks. And at last, Poitier is not required to be unerringly decent: Parks is a slick and controlled hipster with a dark secret and a cool demeanour, owing nothing to no one and intending to keep it that way. One suspects that Poitier was tired of being the nice guy and determined to play someone just south of good (hence his "idea" credit); it must be said that it's nice to see him being a little dangerous for once.

Unfortunately, the operative word is "little." What makes the film ineffectual–as well as close to unwatchable–is the total squareness of its choice of words, images, and motives. Parks/Poitier isn't really indulging in much of his dark side–he's one of those dashing movie criminals you just know wouldn't harm a fly, whatever his words and deeds. As for those words and deeds, the film soft-pedals them to the point of mush, with the gentle Ivy coming in as a civilizing agent to tame the already toothless criminal mastermind. Crucially, the film's hippie character is a good-for-nothing wretch and the white head of the clan is the only one willing to let go of Ivy, bolstering a traditional power structure that another film would have undermined. What this means is that by this point, Poitier was a creature of Hollywood: not out to challenge but to lightly jostle, without much impact at that.

THE DVDs
MGM's non-anamorphic Lilies of the Field disc, recently reissued as part of a Sidney Poitier box set, does fairly well for itself. While the 1.66:1 image quality isn't quite as smooth as it might be (fields of uniform grey occasionally get the jaggies), definition is excellent and shadow detail is as good as one can ask for. The 2.0 mono sound is equally fine, sharp and clear and without any defects. The only extra is the film's fullscreen trailer. Meanwhile, MGM's For Love of Ivy platter is brilliant–far out of proportion to the quality of the film and besting the Anchor Bay release from a few years back by virtue of enhancing the widescreen image for anamorphic displays. The 1.85:1 transfer has incredible lustre, allowing you to see every nauseating detail on certain characters' psychedelic outfits without any loss in colour or brightness. Some night scenes lose a little definition, but that's a minor quibble. The 2.0 mono sound is more than adequate, with voices distinct from sound effects and registering with clarity. There is no bonus material.

• Lilies of the Field
  94 minutes; NR; 1.66:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; MGM
• For Love of Ivy
  101 minutes; G; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; MGM