****SPOILERS**** A bit heavy-handed at first but when the film "Pressure Point" gets down to business, racism in America circa 1942, it shocked the hell out of its unsuspecting audience!
The racist in the film, Bobby Darin, known only as inmate # 17431 is a die in the wool racist and Nazi sympathizer a fact that had him convicted and put behind bars for advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government. What's really surprising is the fact that he, Inmate #17431, makes point after point in his favor to the shock and embarrassment of the person who's trying to cure him of his racism; his prison-appointed Negro psychiatrist played by actor Sidney Poitier. The Nazi racist is so effective in showing that racism is not only confined to Nazi Germany, the USA has its fair share as well, that it's his psychiatrist who seems to be more in need of help then he does by the time the movie ends!
We get to see the Genesis of the Inmates racism in a number of surreal flashbacks starting with him being a little boy, Barry Gordon, who developed a serious Oedipus Complex. This was fostered by the young boy being brutally abused by his drunk and womanizing father, James Anderson. Given comfort by his somewhat mentally unstable mother, Anne Burton, the young man started to feel too dependent on her. This unnatural dependence reached the point where at 15 he decided to leave home and make a life for himself before he ends up like she did; Helpless mentally ill and confined to her bed.
It's then that the young man unable to find work, during the Great Depression, drifted into the arms of the German American Bund. Being a pro-Nazi Organization the Bund poisoned the young man's mind with hatred of both Jews and Blacks. The Bunds propaganda in that Jews & Blacks, together with that cripple in the White House FDR, were keeping him down and without any means of worth-while employment nurtured the young man's racism against them to the point of criminal violence.
The movie has both the Inmate and his psychiatrist involved in a number of mind games with the Inmate always getting the upper hand. Being a black man in the US before the 1963/64 civil rights movement, the film was released in 1962, made it very difficult for the psychiatrist to stay focus on his job of curing his patient of his racism! Since there was not only racism, which his racist patient both maniacally and skillfully exploited, all around him that was not only tolerated at the time, in 1942, but even upheld and protected by the laws of the land! The racist inmate knowing all the buttons to push had his psychiatrist lose it in the end when he, not able in being professional at his job, just packed it in and quit! Or did he!
All this is told by the now, Sidney Poitier, chief psychiatrist of a mental institution to a fellow psychiatrist, Peter Falk, who just about had it with his young 13 year old black patient. Falk's patient is a vicious racist, this time against whites, much like the person who Poitier treated some 20 years ago. It seemed a bit strange that with the chief psychiatrist giving up on his patient back then how can he tell his fellow psychiatrist Peter Falk now to stay focus on it, his patients racism, until he breaks through to him and has him cured. Something which he back in 1942, with his racist patient Inmate # 17431, didn't.
P.S We get this almost nonchalant epilogue by head psychiatrist Poitier in that his former patient, who was paroled against his advice, had some ten years later brutally murdered an old and homeless man which he was executed for. This obviously was put into the movie to show, after being stymied and checkmated at every turn by his clever patient, that he was right all the time in not wanting the racist inmate under his supervision to be released.
The racist in the film, Bobby Darin, known only as inmate # 17431 is a die in the wool racist and Nazi sympathizer a fact that had him convicted and put behind bars for advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government. What's really surprising is the fact that he, Inmate #17431, makes point after point in his favor to the shock and embarrassment of the person who's trying to cure him of his racism; his prison-appointed Negro psychiatrist played by actor Sidney Poitier. The Nazi racist is so effective in showing that racism is not only confined to Nazi Germany, the USA has its fair share as well, that it's his psychiatrist who seems to be more in need of help then he does by the time the movie ends!
We get to see the Genesis of the Inmates racism in a number of surreal flashbacks starting with him being a little boy, Barry Gordon, who developed a serious Oedipus Complex. This was fostered by the young boy being brutally abused by his drunk and womanizing father, James Anderson. Given comfort by his somewhat mentally unstable mother, Anne Burton, the young man started to feel too dependent on her. This unnatural dependence reached the point where at 15 he decided to leave home and make a life for himself before he ends up like she did; Helpless mentally ill and confined to her bed.
It's then that the young man unable to find work, during the Great Depression, drifted into the arms of the German American Bund. Being a pro-Nazi Organization the Bund poisoned the young man's mind with hatred of both Jews and Blacks. The Bunds propaganda in that Jews & Blacks, together with that cripple in the White House FDR, were keeping him down and without any means of worth-while employment nurtured the young man's racism against them to the point of criminal violence.
The movie has both the Inmate and his psychiatrist involved in a number of mind games with the Inmate always getting the upper hand. Being a black man in the US before the 1963/64 civil rights movement, the film was released in 1962, made it very difficult for the psychiatrist to stay focus on his job of curing his patient of his racism! Since there was not only racism, which his racist patient both maniacally and skillfully exploited, all around him that was not only tolerated at the time, in 1942, but even upheld and protected by the laws of the land! The racist inmate knowing all the buttons to push had his psychiatrist lose it in the end when he, not able in being professional at his job, just packed it in and quit! Or did he!
All this is told by the now, Sidney Poitier, chief psychiatrist of a mental institution to a fellow psychiatrist, Peter Falk, who just about had it with his young 13 year old black patient. Falk's patient is a vicious racist, this time against whites, much like the person who Poitier treated some 20 years ago. It seemed a bit strange that with the chief psychiatrist giving up on his patient back then how can he tell his fellow psychiatrist Peter Falk now to stay focus on it, his patients racism, until he breaks through to him and has him cured. Something which he back in 1942, with his racist patient Inmate # 17431, didn't.
P.S We get this almost nonchalant epilogue by head psychiatrist Poitier in that his former patient, who was paroled against his advice, had some ten years later brutally murdered an old and homeless man which he was executed for. This obviously was put into the movie to show, after being stymied and checkmated at every turn by his clever patient, that he was right all the time in not wanting the racist inmate under his supervision to be released.