Poitier and Bogdanovich: The Defiant Ones

Sidney Poitier and Peter Bogdanovich were geniuses of the Hollywood system who, with great success and frustration, worked to transform it in the same era.

Last week, the movies lost two giants — Sidney Poitier and Peter Bogdanovich — who each made history in his own way. Our chief film critics discussed the men, their careers and their legacies.

MANOHLA DARGIS When Poitier and Bogdanovich died last week, you and I talked about how each had helped shape the periods in which they emerged. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. We know their careers briefly overlapped: Bogdanovich directed Poitier in the 1996 TV movie “To Sir, With Love 2,” a sequel to the 1967 film. For the most part, though, they had separate trajectories partly shaped by race, personal choices and what was happening both in the country and the industry.

It’s fascinating to trace the arcs of these separate paths. Poitier’s begins first and his big big-studio break, the 1950 drama “No Way Out.” He was working in Jim Crow Hollywood that he would later help overturn, but it took so long. In some ways, the pressures and contradictions he faced came to a head at the end of the decade first with the release of “The Defiant Ones” in 1958, in which he has equal billing with Tony Curtis. A year later, though, Poitier is on his knees playing Porgy in “Porgy and Bess,” a role that he’d rejected but was effectively forced into taking.