Pressure Point

When a young psychiatrist (Peter Falk) comes to his Afro-American chief (Sidney Poitier) to tell that he can not bear a thirteen year-old patient, the doctor discloses a similar experience he had with a patient when he was a rookie and worked as prison psychiatrist.

In 1942, the doctor is assigned to give psychiatric treatment and evaluate a dangerous American Nazi patient (Bobby Darin) accused of sedition. The racist patient has nightmares and insomnia and the doctor analyzes him along eighteen months, finding the reason of his disturbance. The patient convinces the board of direction that he deserves to be on probation but the doctor is reluctant and diagnoses that the patient has only resolved his sleeping problem but is still a despicable bigoted person.

"Pressure Point" is a theatrical film of intolerance and stress, dated in 2012, but nevertheless a great movie. I do not know how accurate is the psychiatric treatment, but the duel between Bobby Darin and Sidney Poitier is outstanding, both performing victims with strong characters – the patient, son of an abusive father that made him a bigot sadist and the doctor, a winner in a racist society. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Tormentos da Alma" ("Torments of the Soul")

One of the pioneering films of the early sixties, allowing for more freedom of the screen in terms of both subject matter and style, still waits to be rediscovered. It's Pressure Point, which almost - but not quite - made a fullblown movie star out of Bobby Darin. He had always hoped to be the next Sinatra not only in terms of singing but also acting, and he had the chops for each - though timing was against him as the Beatle invasion dimmed interest in American pop stars. Still, he did appear in about a dozen films, none more remarkable than this study of a psychiatrist (Sidney Poitier) analyzing a Neo-Nazi patient (Darin). Originally, producer Stanley Kramer (who wisely chose not to direct, something he wasn't all that good at) had planned to use a nordic-Anglo type for the patient, someone like the young Robert Redford perhaps, until Darin read for the role and blew everyone away. Though Darin was definitely mostly Italian, and probably part Jewish, and therefore very ethnic looking himself, he left the producer stunned with the intensity of his performance. When the film failed at the box-office, that helped to spell an end to his hoped for movie star career; also, Darin was so convincingly unpleasant that it was hard to take him as a light leading man in comedies with Sandra Dee after seeing him so hard-edged - unforgettably so - here. Poitier is quietly effective, and there's a nice cameo by Peter Falk as a boyish (?!) young psychiatrist who, years later, confers with the elderly Poitier and is told this strange story. Though much of the film is grimly realistic in the black and white style so popular at the time, Darin's dream sequences while under analysis are all surrealistically rendered and highly effective. And while there had been civil rights films made throughout the 1950s, none had ever been quite so daring as this. Here's a lost classic worth rediscovering.

Splendidly acted social drama produced by Stanley Kramer. As is usually the case with Kramer productions (except perhaps "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"), "Pressure Point" looks at society and the human condition, finding much to admire, but also much to deplore. Sidney Poitier is on the side of righteousness, playing a black prison psychiatrist whose ideals are challenged by his patient, a bigoted Nazi played by singer Bobby Darin.

The film is most impressive for its refusal to pander to an audience whose enjoyment might be enhanced if all the conflicts between the protagonists were resolved at the conclusion, but "Pressure Point" does not compromise its own integrity by pretending to provide easy answers to the questions it raises. Doctor and patient do not reach an understanding-- they do not embrace each other at the end, nor does the film suggest that society has benefitted from the encounter between two such disparate souls. Life simply goes on, and so do its troubles. "Pressure Point" makes its point subtly without a lot of sanctimonious preaching, and is more effective as a result.

The two stars are well matched with Poitier bringing his usual humanity and quiet pride to a role that does not place as much emphasis on his skin color as one would expect in a 1962 production. Darin is simply superb as Poitier's patient, and one can't help but admire the popular crooner for having had the courage to inhabit such an unappealing character at a time when he was still one of pop music's most prominent "teen idols" (and husband of America's sweetheart, Sandra Dee). The cinematography, music, and direction (by Hubert Cornfield) match the performances perfectly.

I wish that Hubert Cornfield, this film's director, had directed more films. I have seen this one and three others ("Plunder Road", "Lure of the Swamp" and "Night of the Following Day") and they all bear the stamp of a unique and very idiosyncratic vision. The flashback scenes of Bobby Darin's character in this film are truly unique and often quite disturbing, recalling Bunuel and Cocteau in their oneiric intensity. Definitely worth checking out if you are into offbeat and skewed cinema.

Bobby Darin has earned my utmost respect.

I've heard "Mack the Knife" and other snappy songs by him, but I only recently realized that he was an actor as well. I'll admit that this was not a rented movie or something I sought out, just one that I caught from the classic channel, but it was from beginning to end, no commercials or cuts and I cannot express how much admiration I have for Bobby Darin. He came from a weird life (a life only Jack Nicholson could relate to) and add to that a disease that shortened it, but Bobby Darin made his time around one to be remembered. This man's performance in 'Pressure Point' stunned me.

Darin plays a man who's childhood was not one to be envious of. This man's life became even less envious, because the story takes place inside a prison where he is a convict. Sidney Poitier plays the prisons psychiatrist and Darin is sent to him because he cannot sleep due to anxiety. Poitier's character has a hard time with Darin's due to the fact that he is extremely racist (a Nazi even) and is continually treating Poitier as though he understands how he feels is wrong but doesn't care (that is the attitude that I got from it). That he knows everything he feels is based on a lie but he simply does not care...it allows him to be violent and hateful and that is why he does what he does. It's pretty scary and even though sometime you think, "goodness, I hate that sometimes what Darin's character is saying makes a little sense, what in the world is Poitier going to say to that?", that's when the doctor sets him straight.

I am a pretty emotional person and this movie really knows how to pull at them, even for an older movie, it has its 'I can't believe he said that' moments, but it was very impressive for Bobby and Sidney to do a movie with such a point, when others at the time were doing such cheesy things.