Sidney: Oprah-Approved Sidney Poitier Doc as Lovely as the Man it Depicts
By Kim Hughes
Rating: A
One expects a film produced by Oprah Winfrey to be inspirational. And of the many flattering adjectives applicable to director Reginald Hudlin’s heartwarming documentary Sidney, about late actor Sidney Poitier, inspirational is chief among them.
From the start, Poitier was singular. Born unexpectedly and two months premature in Miami in 1927 to tomato farmers from Cat Island in the Bahamas, Poitier, who narrates, tells us he wasn’t expected to live. But live he did. Despite the family’s poverty, the Poitiers were tightknit, bonded, and upstanding, the parents inspiring and elevating their youngest son.
It wasn’t until Poitier moved as a teen to Nassau that he discovered civilization as we might call it: electricity, running water, mirrors. Less thrillingly, a subsequent move to Miami introduced him to racism. He recalls working as a delivery person and being turned away from the front door of a home, package in hand, and ordered to retreat to the back.
New York soon beckoned. In Harlem, Poitier found a more Black-friendly culture as well as work as a dishwasher where he encountered a kindly Jewish man who sharpened his reading, a handy skill as Poitier pursued scripts in what would propel a benchmark and ground-breaking acting career.
Sidney includes many marquee voices, all adoring, from Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee, and Morgan Freeman to Poitier’s six daughters and, from his past, Harry Belafonte (still alive but seen here in archival clips) with whom Poitier had a fiercely competitive but deeply respectful relationship.
Poitier’s ascent through Hollywood — first Black actor to win an Oscar, first Black leading man, bulletproof against mainstream Hollywood stereotyping — forms the film’s dominant and most persuasive chapters, though it does contextualize the concurrent civil rights movement, further underscoring his remarkable achievements in that fraught late-60s climate.
What emerges most forcefully from Sidney, apart from Poitier’s towering talent as an actor, is the kindness and dignity which seemed part of his fundamental nature. His devotion to his family was resolute and enormously endearing. He recalls how, when he took his parents to see him in 1950’s No Way Out, it was their first time seeing him on screen… and first time seeing a movie.
Everyone adored Poitier, including his children and his first wife, who might have had some axes to grind but instead appears here like everyone else: in awe, and not a tiny bit smitten. Poitier died in January, age 94. Legacies don’t come more dazzling. Sidney is a fitting tribute.
Sidney. Directed by Reginald Hudlin. With Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand, and Spike Lee. Airs on AppleTV+ beginning September 23.