Pressure Point

Hubert Cornfield's 1962 American film is set in a prison during the Second World War and follows a Black psychiatrist assigned to treat a white inmate who sympathises with the Nazis. The inmate abuses the doctor in racist terms while the doctor tries to maintain his professional neutrality. The film was adapted from Robert Lindner's 1955 casebook and produced by Stanley Kramer. The tension at the centre is the doctor having to hold down his anger, and that this has a cost. The encounters between Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin carry the whole film. The telling is theatrical and some scenes over-explain; but its question still holds. Who it's for: viewers interested in American social drama of the sixties and Sidney Poitier's work. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding long scenes containing racist language, or wanting plot.