Black Like Me (film)
7.6 /10 1 Votes
83% Rotten Tomatoes Genre Drama Country United States | 6.8/10 IMDb Director Carl Lerner Duration Language EnglishLatin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date May 20, 1964 (1964-05-20) Cast Similar movies The Long Walk Home (1990), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Crash (2004), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), American History X (1998) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Black Like Me (1964) is an American drama film based on the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, who passed as an African-American man for six weeks in 1959 in the Deep South, to report on life in the segregated society from the other side of the color line. The screen play was co-written (with Gerda Lerner) and the film was directed by Carl Lerner. The film stars James Whitmore, Sorrell Booke, and Roscoe Lee Browne.
Contents
The DVD was released December 11, 2012, in North America from Video Services Corp. The DVD includes a documentary titled Uncommon Vision about John Howard Griffin, the journalist on which the main character is based.
Black like me 1964 movie trailer
Plot
John Finley Horton (James Whitmore) is a white journalist who artificially darkens his skin and passes for a black man in the deep South, from New Orleans to Atlanta, where he encounters racism from both white and black people.
Cast
Reception
Critical reception for the film has been mixed. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described the film as "melodramatic and unsubtle", stating that the film failed to place the viewer inside a Negro's skin, and failed to convince the audience that the protagonist "is truly passing for black".
Reviewing the film after the 2012 DVD release, Leonard Maltin awarded the film a positive 3 out of 4 stars, stating that although some aspects of the film felt dated, the film's themes were still timely.
Release
The film made its DVD debut on Feb 12, 2002 by VCI Home Video. It was later re-released by Video Service Corp on Dec 11, 2012.
References
Black Like Me (film) WikipediaBlack Like Me (film) IMDbBlack Like Me (film) Rotten TomatoesBlack Like Me (film) themoviedb.org