A Patch of Blue

Film has very good scripting plus excellent direction and performances, including an exceptional screen debut by Elizabeth Hartman as the gal.

Moving 1965 love story with the late Elizabeth Hartman giving an excellent performance as a tormented blind girl who falls in love with the only person who treats her kindly (Sidney Poiter). It was Hartman's debut, and she and director Guy Green succeed in keeping it from becoming overly sentimental. [23 Aug 1990, p.F5]

This moving story neatly avoids melodrama.

In hindsight, it all looks like a rather tentative Hollywood essay at the race angle, but the actors do mesh together convincingly despite the obvious narrative contrivances, and debut girl Hartman's persuasive account of the everyday travails of the sightless is engrossing without overdoing the self-pity.

Shelley Winters won an Oscar for being her own unbearable self (as Hartman's nagging mother) and Guy Green (The Magus) directed with eyes on the noble Kleenex box and visions of Stanley Kramer running through his noggin.