Movie: Pressure Point (1962)
Pressure Point poster (1962)
Well, this was a relaxing movie to watch right before leaving for work today.
JUST KIDDING, LOL.
Pressure Point opens with Baby Peter Falk storming into Old Age Makeup Sidney Poitier’s office and demanding that another psychiatrist step in to work with his current patient, a thirteen-year-old Black boy who doesn’t trust white people.
Rather than grant his request, Old Age Makeup Sidney Poitier tells Baby Peter Falk—they were both born in 1927, by the way, OBVIOUSLY I looked it up—that he wants him on the case because he’s good at what he does. And then, via flashback, Poitier tells Falk about a very difficult case early in his own career, in which he had to give a Nazi therapy when he was a prison psychiatrist.
Sooooo, yeah. It felt pretty relevant to, you know… everything.
Some things I loved about it:
• It was very clear-eyed about the crap Poitier’s character—none of the characters are named, he’s just listed as ‘Doctor’—had to deal with at work ON TOP OF treating Bobby Darin the Nazi. (Yes, THAT Bobby Darin.)
• Similarly, the movie understood that Poitier’s supervisor and co-workers totally undercut him & didn’t consider him an equal. (You can see Poitier simmering as he deals with them—these people who are supposedly his peers and who supposedly trust his abilities and judgement—and ultimately, when (SPOILER) they take the word of A LITERAL NAZI over his, hoo boy. Just thinking about it again makes me want to throw something.)
• Possibly my favorite exchange in the whole movie:
Co-worker: I don’t know what you’ve done, but ever since you started with him, he’s shown the fastest improvement I’ve seen around here.
Co-worker 2: Doesn’t seem like the same man.
Sidney Poitier: Thank you, gentlemen, but I don’t think I can accept your praise. His conduct probably has improved, and he has no more blackout spells. But otherwise, I don’t see much change in him.
Boss: What do you mean?
Sidney Poitier: Well, he’s still a Nazi, for instance.
AND THE LOOK HE FOLLOWS THAT LINE UP WITH, OMG.
Like, if Sidney Poitier looked at me like that, I’d melt into the floor out of pure shame & embarrassment, never to recover… but his dumbass colleagues don’t even really notice. And if they do notice, they don’t care. Because they think they know better.
• Despite being from 1962, it’s hardly dated at all??? (Minus the joke Peter Falk makes at the end about trying to treat his patient… in blackface… which, please let that have been a “joke”, I’m really not sure.) But the conversations that Poitier and Darin have, and the discussions around power and money and disenfranchised white people latching on to the idea of Someone To Blame, oof. So much of what’s in here is stuff that we’re still fighting against.
• This is NOT an Oh, The Poor Misunderstood Nazi Had A Hard Childhood story. It’s about understanding the hows and whys of who someone is, but it’s not about sympathizing with that person. Poitier verbalizes it at one point, where he’s basically like… “Yeah, there are a lot of people out there who had garbage childhoods and they didn’t all become Nazis, so let’s just not, okay?”
• There’s a moment when Poitier goes on a verbal tear and then flicks his eyes slightly up and directly into the camera and there he is, making eye contact with you, and it. is. AWESOME.
• Also at one point he lights Peter Falk’s cigarette and I fully admit that one of my fave things about old movies is how people are always lighting cigarettes for each other and just so intimate and—dare I say?—HOT.
There’s lots more—I didn’t even talk about how the flashbacks within the flashback were shot—but I’ll be watching it again for sure.
I watched it on Criterion; it’s not available for streaming on Amazon at the moment, though the DVD is available & your library might even have it?