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A Warm December (1972)

Director: Sidney Poitier

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Black radical chic with a tragic twist. Poitier, a widowed doctor, runs a ghetto clinic in Washington DC, races motor-bikes on the side, and has enough money to live in style. While in London on holiday with his 10-year-old daughter, he meets and falls in love with Catherine (Anderson), daughter of an ambassador from a new African state. Punctuated by unnecessary mystery music and mysterious-looking foreigners in raincoats, the secret emerges that Catherine is dying of sickle cell disease. The love is short-lived. She is beautiful, bright, and brave. We all leave in tears.

Author: MV

Time Out Film Guide


User reviews of this film

  • LadyG said...
    Posted on Oct 17 2008 01:43 It's a very good film that I think was also ahead of its time. For the first (and only in my case) time, we are able to see the crippling effects of sickle cell anaemia and how it is treated. Ms Anderson's heart-rending performance was captivating. Poitier was as effortlessly handsome as ever and Yvette Curtis injected youthful innocence and a light-hearted component to the film. The plot of "A Warm December" is unlike the usual blaxpoitation films' of the time, with story lines that were to portray black characters as pimps or drug dealers. Not only does it raise the awareness of a relatively-newly understood black disease, it also portrays black people in a very positive light; professionally and in their private lives.
    A must see for any love of film.
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