Came for Dinner and Never Left
2nd November 2023
ZMan breaks out the popcorn.
Some movies are on the top-100 list because they are great stories told very well, while others are on the list for their great technological breakthroughs. Some are on the list for their cultural impact. That is the case with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a comedy about race mixing from 1967. The film had two legends, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, and a big star at the moment in Sydney Poitier.
The film was viewed at the time as groundbreaking because it featured a mixed-race couple in a positive light. Right around the time the movie was released, the Supreme Court had struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia. Of course, the civil rights movement was at its peak, so this was just what white liberals wanted to see, which was white liberals being celebrated for their goodness.
The movie itself is pretty simple. It opens with the couple in question, generic rich white girl and her much older black boyfriend, Sydney Poitier, getting off an airplane and strolling through an airport like lovers on a walk in the park. Keep in mind that this is 1967, but no one in the airport notices, because you see, this is the glorious future where race no longer matters, so get used to it you terrible bigots.