• Pinky

11/23/21 (Tues)

Elia Kazan’s 1949 film about a light-skinned black returning to her roots. This was not originally his project – he took over from John Ford, who bowed out after a week following a huge row with Ethel Waters – but his willingness to take on a “problem film” dealing with the issue of discrimination fits in nicely with his preceding Oscar-winning turn in Gentlemen’s Agreement. He did a solid job, especially in the high quality of the acting.

The film was much criticized for its casting of lily-white Jeanne Crain (the ingénue in State Fair) as the mixed-race girl Pinky as opposed to light-skinned black actresses reportedly vying for the role, notably Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. But aside from the fact that her extreme white skin is entirely possible depending on her parentage (no such info is offered), having a white actress in the role highlights what’s at stake here as she maneuvers between two starkly different worlds. We don’t even realize that she’s part-black at the start of the film until she addresses the black woman, Dicey, as Mother (a superb Ethel Waters). Playing a mixed-race woman was an interesting career move for Crain given how that would have been received in much of the country. Regardless of the controversy, she does very good work as the cynical woman torn between two lives.

The location is not identified, but a passing reference to Birmingham suggests we’re in 1930s Alabama, a time and place when Confederate veterans may still have been alive and the civil rights movement is still decades away. The contrast between the employer’s stately house and Mammy’s shack suggests a former plantation and slave quarters.

Dicey sends money every month from her earnings as a washerwoman to support her child in nursing school up north. Pinky was assumed to be white from the moment she boarded the train to leave (she was escorted to the white section) and played along. She discovered a better life than she had ever known, one in which she was “treated like a human being”. When she comes back to the South after her studies, it is to say goodbye to her mother, her culture and her own identity to marry a white man and live as a white woman. The mother has her get on her knees and pray for forgiveness, but things at home prove as bad as Pinky remembers. When men see her walking on the street in the colored section, they offer her a ride in concern for her safety; when they learn she’s partly black, they nearly rape her instead. When she goes to buy a veil in a shop, she’s treated with respect until a customer who knows her complains that they shouldn’t be serving a “nigra”; the shop then suspects her of using stolen money and jacks the price up in an attempt to run her off.

Blacks aren’t all portrayed as angels: we learn that Dicey’s shifty neighbor (a very good Frederick O’Neal) hasn’t been sending Pinky the monthly money as promised, and the neighbor’s girlfriend (Nina Mae McKinney) is a spitfire who carries a knife in her garter to settle disputes. Still, they chafe under the same system. An argument between the women attracts the police. When the fireball tells them that Pinky is just a “low-down colored gal”, the outraged policeman slaps her; when Pinky confirms that she is in fact black, he slaps her too.

Such repeated incidents break her down, prompting her to pack her bags angrily to return to the North and her white fiancé. Dicey wants her to stay and, as a nurse, help take care of the sick white employer, Miss Em (a scene-stealing Ethel Barrymore). Pinky is appalled, recalling being thrown out of Miss Em’s garden when she was a child. The more understanding Dicey points out that the cranky Miss Em didn’t let any children in the garden regardless of color, and adds that Miss Em took care of her and actually slept in the shack with her when she was deathly ill. Pinky resists, but Dicey’s pleas (“I worked long and hard to give you an education. And if they done educated the very heart out of you, everything I’ve worked and slaved so hard for is wrong”) wear her down. Pinky finally agrees to stay, assuming that the woman doesn’t have long to live anyway. Pinky, still seething at her memory of the woman and how Dicey has served her all these years, is curt at first, and the situation is not helped by Miss Em’s barking and bossy attitude. The story of how they come together drives the plot from that point. In the end, when Miss Em passes away, she leaves the house and its possessions to Pinky, prompting the incensed nasty cousin (Evelyn Varden, great) to contest the will. That essentially pits the entire white community against Pinky, a battle that no one welcomes, including the black community: Dicey’s neighbor says that if she continues with the case, he’s going to leave town for a while, noting that his house has no fire insurance. The court scene could have been better (To Kill a Mockingbird was far superior in that respect) but has its moments. When the judge reaches his verdict, Pinky’s lawyer tells her in the film’s most memorable line, “Well, you got justice. But I doubt if any other interests of this community have been served.”

Her boyfriend, having recovered from the shock of his girlfriend’s heritage, still wants to take her away and marry her. But not to his hometown in Boston, where everyone knows him; he wants to go to Denver and start anew, suggesting that he is not quite on board with her heritage either. He says Pinky can go back to her real name, Patricia, and forget about her “dark” side. Pinky, though loving him and knowing how much easier life would be, realizes this is basically denying her own identity. She agonizes over what to do with the big house in the middle of a white community. Her eventual decision is rather sentimental but effective in context.

A very fine film that still holds up more than 70 years later. It’s not the first to explore mixed-race issues, following the stage musical Showboat and the great film Imitation of Life (which it resembles in some ways) by many years. But it does so in an understated way that is never preachy. Viewers are sure to be offended by the Jemima-looking Dicey and the lack of black characters other than the mixed-race Pinky willing to fight for their dignity (as defined today – Dicey in fact clearly finds dignity in her simple life). But it seems an honest portrait of the times. An impressive film.