Uptown Saturday Night (1974) & Let’s Do It Again (1975) & A Piece of the Action (1977)

          Though he’s best known for his ultra-serious onscreen persona, Sidney Poitier not only starred in but also directed the hit comedy Uptown Saturday Night, the first of three Poitier-helmed ’70s pictures in which the actor shares the screen with funnyman Bill Cosby. The movies are not a series, since neither characters nor storylines recur from film to film. However, the movies all boast impressive casts, slick production values, and a certain kind of moral integrity, since they emulate the blaxpoitation aesthetic without perpetuating blaxploitation stereotypes. They’re celebratory movies designed to entertain and inspire African-American audiences.

          Uptown Saturday Night is the weakest of the trio, partially because of an episodic story structure and partially because Poitier and his collaborators let scenes drag on to excessive lengths. Another issue, which troubles the entire series, is that Cosby rarely gets to embark on comedic flights of fancy. Whenever he does, the movies receive a huge uplift, which means that any time he’s stuck delivering exposition or playing bland dramatic scene, the series’ best resource is untapped. Uptown Saturday Night stars Poitier as Steve, a steelworker, and Cosby as Wardell, a cab driver. One evening, Wardell persuades Steve to visit an expensive brothel/gambling joint/nightclub called Madam Zenobia’s. The blue-collar guys pay dearly for visiting the high-roller establishment, because robbers invade the club and steal personal items from everyone in attendance. The next day, Wendell realizes that his wallet, which was taken by the crooks, contains a winning lottery ticket worth $50,000.

          In order to find the stolen goods, the friends infiltrate the local underworld, which puts them in the middle of a war between gangsters Geechie Dan (Harry Belafonte) and Silky Slim (Calvin Lockhart). Culture-clash gags ensue, climaxing in a goofy finale that involves a car chase, cross-dressing, and a funkadelic picnic. While Poitier displays almost zero control over pacing and tone, the movie features excellent supporting turns by Roscoe Lee Browne and Rosalind Cash. (The less said about Belafonte’s embarrassing Marlon Brando imitation, complete with cotton-stuffed cheeks, the better.) By far, the best scene in Uptown Saturday Night is Richard Pryor’s extended cameo as a nervous con man, because he explodes with the edge and energy the rest of the film sorely needs.

          Poitier and his collaborators righted the ship for Let’s Do It Again, the best of the trio. A straight-up caper comedy filled with colorful characters and crazy schemes, the movie works fairly well almost from start to finish, though it should’ve been 15 minutes shorter. This time, Billy (Cosby) and Clyde (Poitier) are blue-collar types who run a con in order to raise money for their fraternal lodge, a vital community hub. Traveling to New Orleans with their wives—and $18,000 in purloined lodge money—the boys secretly hypnotize prizefighter Bootney Farnsworth (Jimmie Walker), then place huge bets on Bootney before a title match. Scenes of Billy and Clyde dressing like pimps while they pretend to be players are cheerfully outlandish. Predictably, fixing fights gets our heroes into hot water with two New Orleans gangsters, Biggie Smalls (Lockhart) and Kansas City Mack (John Amos). Once again, high jinks ensue.

          Some of the material is wheezy, like the bit of escaping a hotel room with tied-up bedsheets, but most of the scenes are inventive and lively. Cosby also gets to do more pure shtick this time around, and the tunes on the soundtrack are fantastic—soul-music legend Curtis Mayfield composed the score as well as several original songs, recruiting the Staple Singers to perform the songs. Let’s Do It Again has many famous admirers, including the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., who borrowed his nickname “Biggie Smalls” from the movie.

          The quasi-series took a strange turn with the final entry, A Piece of the Action, which is a social-issue drama disguised as a comedy. Running an exhausting 135 minutes, the movie opens with three vibrant heist sequences. The robbers are Dave (Cosby) and Manny (Poitier), who neither know each other nor work together. Enter Detective Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones), a recently retired cop who summons the crooks to a hotel room and blackmails them. In exchange for sitting on evidence that could put them in jail for years, Joshua forces the thieves to volunteer at a community center for at-risk youth. Once this plot twist kicks in, the movie becomes a riff on Poitier’s hit To Sir, With Love (1967). While Dave tries to find jobs for the youths at the community center, Manny becomes the kids’ teacher, giving tough-love lessons about dignity and responsibility.

          Many scenes in A Piece of the Action are downright heavy, such as a fierce showdown during which brash student Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) drives idealistic teacher Sarah (Hope Clarke) to tears by characterizing her as a dilettante exploiting poor African-Americans. Later still, the movie becomes a sort of thriller, because thugs from the heroes’ pasts show up for revenge. Despite featuring strong performances and sincere rhetoric, A Piece of the Action is awkward and unwieldy. Therefore, while it’s easily the most edifying of the three pictures, it might also be the least entertaining. Worse, the movie features Cosby delivering a crass rape joke that now has unwanted associations.

          Rumors have swirled for years that one or all of the Cosby/Poitier pictures would be remade, with Will Smith’s name perpetually floated as a likely participant.

Uptown Saturday Night: FUNKY

Let’s Do It Again: GROOVY

A Piece of the Action: FUNKY

Claudine (1974)

          Charming, engrossing, and socially relevant, the small-scale dramedy Claudine is an anomaly among ’70s pictures about African-American life. Eschewing the militant politics of underground films and the sleazy grit of blaxploitation flicks, Claudine tells a simple human story in an accessible style. Further, the movie is rooted in respect for individuals who survive life below the poverty line with their dignity intact. Although this is an unmistakably a black story, exploring the myriad ways social ills complicate life for a family in Harlem, the themes of Claudine are relatable to anyone who has faced difficulty balancing family and finances. If the movie has a noteworthy flaw, it’s that Claudine sometimes employs sitcom-style cuteness in terms of dialogue and presentation—but the underlying story is so grounded that the cuteness is at most an occasional distraction.

          Diahann Carroll, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance, plays Claudine Price, the single mother of six who’s squeaking by on welfare after being abandoned by every man to whom she’s been married or with whom she’s been romantically involved. The beautiful but tough Claudine catches the eye of jovial trash collector Rupert Marshall (James Earl Jones), who eventually persuades Claudine to go out on a date. Rupert encounters resistance as soon as he meets Claudine’s kids, who haven’t met many trustworthy men. Nonetheless, Rupert wins over all of Claudine’s spirited offspring except her oldest son, Charles (Laurence Hilton-Jacobs), who has a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan Island.

          Aside from the lively performances and sensitive writing, the most interesting aspect of Claudine is the film’s exploration of what welfare means in the life of a woman like Claudine. She can’t make enough money through menial jobs to support her children, so she needs government assistance, but even welfare can’t bridge the gap between expenses and income. Therefore, Claudine must lie to her welfare officer once she starts dating Rupert, because, technically, his participation in the family represents additional income—even though his presence in the long run isn’t guaranteed. It’s fascinating to watch a proud woman navigate this moral quagmire, and it’s informative to see how Rupert recognizes that his interest in Claudine carries economic baggage. Given the feather-light premises of most romantic comedies, which tend to involve characters with all the options in the world, Claudine represents an unusually plugged-in take on the rom-com genre.

            It’s also a great pleasure to see the chemistry between Carroll and Jones. Not to downplay the many virtues of Carroll’s leading performance, the mixture of anguish and approachability within Jones’ performance gives Claudine much of its texture. Guiding these actors is director John Berry, a veteran of the studio era who was blacklisted for his left-leaning politics in the ’50s; Claudine was one of several African-American-themed movies Berry directed upon his return from Hollywood exile. Another notable Claudine player is composer Curtis Mayfield, who created the score as well as a handful of songs that are performed by Gladys Knight & the Pips.

Claudine: GROOVY

Sparkle (1976)

          A routine showbiz melodrama enlivened by great music, Sparkle leaves virtually no cliché untouched. Written by future director Joel Schumacher, from a story by Howard Rosenman, the movie follows the exploits of three young women who try to escape life in the New York ghetto by singing soul music in nightclubs circa the 1950s and ’60s. Inspired by the real-life adventures of vocal groups like the Supremes, Sparkle in turn inspired the creation of the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls, which was of course adapted for the screen in 2006. Continuing the pop-culture recycling, a remake of Sparkle was released in 2012, featuring the late Whitney Houston’s final acting performance.
          Given how enduring this movie and its imitators have proven to be, one might expect Sparkle to shine, but it’s merely an energetic trifle.

          That said, it’s not difficult to see what fans like about the picture, because the combination of a rags-to-riches showbiz saga and overheated domestic melodrama gives Sparkle campy zing as it hoots and hollers through 98 music-filled minutes. The figure at the center of the story is Stix, played by Philip Michael Thomas of Miami Vice fame in an amateurish but endearing performance. He’s a would-be music mogul who recruits several friends (both male and female) to form a singing group. Almost immediately, Sister (Lonette McKee) becomes the breakout member of the group, ostensibly because of her showboating vocals but really because she’s a sexy knockout.

          Stix shrinks the group into a vocal trio called Sister and the Sisters, in the process marginalizing his sweet girlfriend, Sister’s younger sibling Sparkle (Irene Cara). As Sister’s fame grows, she falls in with an abusive, drug-addicted manager named Satin (Tony King), which starts Sister down the path of self-destruction. Eventually, Stix persuades Sparkle it’s her turn to shine. As in Fame (1980), Cara makes an impression with her unique combination of an unassuming screen presence and a powerhouse voice.

           McKee is just as potent a singer, so the musical sequences of Sparkle are wonderful; in fact, the real star of the movie is soul-music legend Curtis Mayfield, who wrote and produced the movie’s songs. (One tune, “Something He Can Feel,” became a breakout hit from the film’s companion album, on which Aretha Franklin sang the lead vocals.) Furthermore, McKee is quite beautiful in the film, and she gives the picture’s best dramatic performance as her character suffers a precipitous decline. (Mary Alice offers a rock-solid counterpoint as the mother of the singing sisters.)

          Sparkle has many virtues in terms of music and performance, so it’s ironic that the film’s least interesting element—its story—has enjoyed the longest life. Yet there’s a reason why people play sad songs over and over again; like a favorite tune, Sparkle presses so many familiar buttons that it’s the equivalent of comfort food.

Sparkle: FUNKY

Short Eyes (1977)

          The grim prison melodrama Short Eyes teems with authentic behavior and dialogue, and with good reason: Writer Miguel Piñero adapted the script from his own award-winning play, which was in turn extrapolated from a turbulent youth spent in and out of jail. Short Eyes depicts the tumult that arises in a men’s lockup when the prisoners discover a new inmate is a pedophile. As directed by Robert M. Young, a socially conscious filmmaker whose fictional work reflects his background in documentaries, Short Eyes is a gritty travelogue through the complex social dynamics formed by prisoners, and the picture is infused with gruesome textures. So even though the piece features passages of men bonding through pastimes like music and cockroach races, there’s no risk of glamorizing the prison experience.

          Quite to the contrary, Piñero and Young present a horrifying milieu in which danger is omnipresent, the exchange of sexual favors for protection is an everyday reality, and racial divisions are so regimented that there’s a table in the day room for the blacks, one for the Puerto Ricans, and one for the whites, who in this environment are the oppressed minority. There’s also a harshly enforced caste system, with pedophiles at the very bottom, meaning they’re fair game for abuse and violence.

          Piñero introduces several vivid characters, from the speechifying black revolutionary whose boasts eclipse his desire for real violence, to the hot-tempered Puerto Rican drug addict forever angling to make the prison’s youngest inmate his sexual plaything. At the center of the story is Juan (Jósé Pérez), a thoughtful con who adheres to the prison’s class divisions but uses diplomacy to defuse pointless conflicts. So when child-molester Clark Davis (Bruce Davison) arrives in the cellblock, Juan tries to understand Clark instead of leaping to judgment. In the picture’s most harrowing scene, Clark unloads his secret history, describing in excruciating detail how he finds his victims. Juan’s reaction to Clark’s purging is a complex mixture of anger, bewilderment, compassion, disgust, and rage, so it’s painful to watch prison’s hive-mind distill its collective response into a brutal form of vigilante justice.

          Although Short Eyes is undoubtedly amped up for dramatic effect, as seen in the prisoners’ tendencies toward revelatory encounter-group dialogue exchanges, the picture is fascinating and nauseating at the same time. The whole cast is strong, with Davison going deep into the abyss of his tortured character and Pérez providing a strong thread of anguished humanity. Future indie-cinema fave Luis Guzmán appears in a tiny role, and singers Freddie Fender and Curtis Mayfield (who also did the score) show up as inmates; each performs a tune in the day room.

Short Eyes: GROOVY