The Defiant Ones

Two convicts escape when a transport truck crashes. The problem is that their wrists are chained together, and one is a racist white southerner and the other is Black. They go on hating each other throughout the escape, and they cannot separate. The idea is simple and entirely physical: two men have to run at the same speed, climb at the same moment and sleep in the same place. Stanley Kramer states the race question with a chain rather than through argument. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier take the leads. Poitier was nominated for Best Actor for it, the first Black actor nominated in that category. There is a trick in the credits. The script appeared under the name Nathan E. Douglas, a pseudonym for Nedrick Young, who could not use his own name because he had been blacklisted. The Oscar was won under that name. Important for anyone interested in 1950s American cinema and the first open handling of race on screen. Seen now, the message is very flat, and the criticism that it gives too much room to the white character's transformation is fair.