Claudine (1974)
Grade: 79
"Claudine" is an intelligently scripted and directed drama. The characters are generally believable and compelling. The acting is excellent, even by the small children, and the soundtrack is very good as well.
"Claudine" tells the story of an unwed mother (Diahann Carroll) with six children. She is on welfare, has a job as a maid, but is still so impoverished that no one in the family has a car. She develops a relationship with a garbageman (James Earl Jones) who has reservations about becoming stepfather and provider for her children. Claudine has the impossible task of raising her children properly, earning a living, staying on public assistance which she clearly needs, and keeping her lover satisfied and stationary.
The soundtrack is performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips, with the songs written by Curtis Mayfield. The opening title, "On and On", was a top ten pop hit in 1974. The songs are all very good.
James Earl Jones, a character actor who has become famous primarily for his deep and resonant voice, demonstrates in this film that he is also a capable leading actor.
I liked the characters of the children. While sometimes tender, they can also be selfish, bratty, and manipulative, just like non-celluloid children are.
Spoiler alert:
The film's ending is a little muddled. It's hard to tell whether the family is going to jail or taking a walk in the park. There is a confrontation between demonstrators and police that somehow gets mixed up with the wedding. Also, how Jones plans to reconcile his financial problems with the provider role is discussed but not resolved.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews