Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue (1965)
A calm, encouraging childhood is a wonderful thing. So are education and perhaps the odd role model. And it’s clear that Rose-Ann D’Arcey (the Oscar-winning Winters) has never been near such opportunities. Indeed, she comes from a ‘trash heap.’ That’s why she’s a coarse hooker, an ignorant, abusive, thoroughly unlikeable human being.
A lost cause.
But should we cut her some slack? Might any one of us have turned out the same way if given the same lousy soil to grow within? Perhaps, but when we see her repeatedly belt a blind girl across the chops it really is difficult to take her environmental deficiencies into account.
To make it worse, the girl in question is her own daughter, Selina (Elizabeth Hartman). Rose-Ann treats her like a slave, berating her on a daily basis in their cramped apartment. It’s like she hates her very presence. Why is she so cruel? Bit by bit, we learn that it’s possibly the result of guilt. Rose-Ann, you see, once hurled a bottle at her long-gone husband, missed, and removed her daughter’s sight at the age of five. Selina’s dependency is the result of her flaws, an everyday reminder that she can’t get anything right. Rose-Ann rejects her on a fundamental level yet wishes to control every aspect of her existence just like Margaret White does with her daughter, Carrie.
Things start to change, though, when Selina meets a black man (Sidney Poitier) in the park. He treats her with kindness and respect. Rose-Ann, of course, is a racist. “I seen you with that nigger!” is her first observation on their burgeoning relationship. “You know what I always taught you about coloured trash!”
A Patch of Blue is a worthwhile watch and pretty confronting for its time, given it deals with alcoholism, rape, poverty, domestic abuse, racism and the not insignificant matter of a black-white kissy-wissy. The two central characters are a bit too noble to fully convince, and I did wonder why Selina has turned out so patient and polite. How is it possible for her to be untouched by her mother’s coarseness?
Winters, however, is terrific, a brassy, foul-mouthed harridan who never comes close to a moment of self-reflection, let alone a Darth Vader Sell-Out.
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