It could have been worse. The problem with 'problem pictures' is that mawkishnness often rules the day and instead of genuine emotion we are left with great dollops of sentimentality and if the problem is a mental or physical handicap, reason hardly enters into it. Throw in a second 'problem' and you're really in danger of messing things up. In "A Patch of Blue" blindness is the handicap with Elizabeth Hartman as the blind girl living with a harridan of a mother, (it was the mother who blinded her), who one day meets a nice man in the park; the 'problem' is he's black, doubling the movie's potential for mawkishness. It's a 'Guess Who's Coming Dinner' romance but with a blind heroine who can't see the potential 'problem' in front of her.
The director was Guy Green who made the not dissimilar "Light in the Piazza" and he does very well with material that would defeat a lesser director, helped by a cast headed by Sidney Poitier, (who else), Hartman, Shelley Winters, (winning an Oscar and chewing the scenery as the mother), and Wallace Ford and a screenplay, (Green was also the writer), that sidesteps both mawkishness and sentimentality for most of the time.. The film's heart is certainly in the right place and Poitier, as always, is superb. Today, of course, neither Hartman's 'handicap' or Poitier's skin colour would be a problem so a movie like this is something of a period piece but, remember, back in 1965 it was both controversial and challenging. It may be no classic but it's no disaster either.
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