THE DEFIANT ONES

US, 1958, 96 minutes, Black and white.
Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Theodore Bikel, Cara Williams. Directed by Stanley Kramer.

The Defiant Ones was one of the leading films of 1958. It looks somewhat dated now in the light of Sidney Poitier's subsequent career and popularity and his appearing in so many popular films on the race issue. However, this film is a good one and well worth discussing. Its basic premise is obvious; two escaped convicts chained together, one black, one white, but it is worked out in a compelling and moving way.
Sidney Poitier is as one would expect. Tony Curtis was at the stage where he was moving from glamour-boy roles into more substantial dramatic parts.

Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremburg, Ship of Fools, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) directed.

1. What was the significance of the title? Whom did they defy? Why?

2. Did you think that the film was meant to be taken literally, as an off-beat, interesting story, or as a parable?

3. What were your first reactions to the two convicts? How did the screenplay establish their characters? Did you understand them as persons? Did you find them sympathetic?

4. What picture of prisons and chain-gangs did the film give? What was your reaction to this kind of imprisonment?

5. What brutalising effects did the prison life have on the prisoners, and on their guards?

6. How desperate were the two convicts when they escaped?

7. What was the impact of their making their escape together? Which was more important, the linking of two men, the linking of a weaker man with a stronger, or the linking of a black wan with a white man?

8. How did the film and its technique highlight this linking and its consequences? What were the emotional reactions of the two to their situation and to each other?

9. How frustrating and limiting was the chain for the two of them? How did their being linked help them? How did it change their attitudes, e.g. the attempt to catch the train?

10. Consider each episode during the chase and its effect on the two of them, on their being linked, on their changing relationship.

11. What was the significance of the sequence with the widow and her son? How did it change both of the escapees? what effect did it have on her, and the son?

12. How important were the pursuers to the film? Did you agree with their attitudes and methods of pursuit? Why? How humane were they?

13. Was the ending satisfactory? Were the questions raised by the film resolved?

14. Was this film a significant contribution to better racial understanding? Why?