Claudine (1974) Directed by John Berry
Even though the sanguine, infectious bliss of John Berry’s Claudine unfailingly operates from a sweetly compassionate and adequately affectionate plane, the situational gravitas of its squalid context confers a certain legitimate rage to the characters in this uplifting rom com; a film that handles the genre with its conventions and its platitudes. Nevertheless, the approach here is more ethnocultural than tritely populist in its social factors, rendering it singular in its inspirational progressive humanism.
Diahann Carroll is a working-class black woman – the eponymous heroine of the story – and the mother of six children; she is a woman devoted to working and raising her children, feeding them and keeping them away from the seedy life that plagues the Harlem streets. Her life becomes more exciting when she meets a humorous and charming garbage collector, Rupert (James Earl Jones), with whom she falls in love, and they initiate a romance that eventually evolves into something as serious as getting married. However, the romantic aspirations of the lovestruck couple are dashed by a series of issues that stem from economic and social discrepancies of all kinds. Claudine’s plight is not individual, it is national, racial and political; she must live uncomfortably under the scrutiny of welfare – a very flawed and prejudiced one – so her life is neither exactly her own nor private.
John Berry’s empathy for Claudine and Rupert is remarkable – himself a man who was a victim of the paranoid political bigotry of the Cold War – stirs up very genuine emotions that ultimately translate perfectly well into the very true-to-life performances of Carroll and James Earl Jones. The story is a moving indictment not only of the malfunctioning welfare system but also unveils the social reality of the black community in the 1970s. The film succeeds because Claudine and Rupert are characters who carry human flaws, and the two build a symbiotic relationship through those faults; they are a fascinating couple who love each other sincerely despite their unfixable scars and shortcomings. The drama’s mirthfulness and light-hearted humor offer hope amidst the paradox of its implacable social realism, because Claudine and Rupert’s passionate union transcends the squalor in their lives, they are a happy couple wealthy in humanity, solidarity and humility, qualities lacking in the most affluent elites who in reality are grossly impoverished in ethical values. The hopeful emphasis on Claudine’s precarious domestic conditions, and how she valiantly deals with this inauspicious environment, restores neglected tenets that are sorely needed in our contemporary society, because ultimately it is the human spirit that determines what makes a person a good citizen regardless of his or her socioeconomic status. Claudine and Rupert are that unwavering soul.
Everything feels genuine in John Berry’s film, from the effervescent music to every trace of sorrow and contentment that the characters exude. But it is also the gritty portrayal of a mother struggling against the vicissitudes of life and the inequities of society that ignites in the story a roar of awareness and rage that transforms this film into more than an affable romantic comedy and a good movie, it is a powerful drama incisively determined to reveal with bittersweet vividness the reality of the marginalized.