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")

Watch this film and not only will you realize how good singer Bobby Darin could be in a dramatic role, but you may come to regard its co-writer / director Hubert Cornfield ("The Night of the Following Day") as an under-rated talent. It's mostly a two character piece in which an eminent psychiatrist (Sidney Poitier) attempts to help one of his employees (Peter Falk) by telling a story of the major case of his life, when he was a prison doctor during WWII. Poitier was assigned a young man (Darin), jailed for sedition, who's very upfront about his bigotry and hatred. Not surprisingly, the patient had a traumatic childhood and now suffers from nightmares and blackouts. Poitier tries to maintain his professionalism, but the young man sets off something inside of him.

Poitier as always has a very authoritative presence and he and Darin work extremely well together. They have a lot of dialogue to deliver and completely immerse themselves in these troubled characters. Darin reveals enough depth here that people may wonder why he didn't pursue more serious roles. Cornfield creates some wonderfully stark atmosphere and stylish visuals, but never goes overboard, having the proper respect in the source material, a true case detailed in Dr. Robert M. Lindners' "The Fifty-Minute Hour". Some moments are quite memorable, such as the scenes with the patients' unloving father (James Anderson), a butcher. There's also an incredible scene of an epic session of tic-tac-toe that could have come off as silly but which has a powerful creepiness about it.

Overall, this is an effectively done little drama that isn't as well known as it ought to be. It's well worth seeing for the interplay between Poitier and Darin alone.

Eight out of 10.

Reflecting back on another case during the days of World War II, psychiatrist Sidney Poitier is telling colleague Peter Falk not to give up on a case he has with racial differences between him and the patient in Pressure Point. Science and the doctor's obligation to render assistance cancel all things out.

Twenty years back from the Civil Rights era, at its height when Pressure Point was made, back to World War II Poitier is a prison psychiatrist who gets one bad patient. It's Bobby Darin who had never been seen like this on film, as a racist punk who belongs to the German American Bund. Although Darin and his band of thugs have done some really violent crimes, some of which we see in flashback, it's for sedition that he's been arrested.

Still a recurring nightmare brings him to the couch in Poitier's office and the two of them develop a curious relationship. Darin pushes all of Poitier's buttons, in fact he's a pretty loathsome type. Curing his nightmares will not necessarily make him one that will socially adjust back in society.

Film Historians have called Poitier things like Saint Sidney for the heroic good roles he played back in the day as the first black leading man in mainstream films. He might just have qualified for it here, even more than in his film debut No Way Out dealing with another racist criminal Richard Widmark, that time as a medical doctor.

It was Darin who showed the acting chops here that were never displayed before. He was nominated for his performance as a Best Supporting Actor in Captain Newman, MD., personally I think this is his best screen work.

Pressure Point is a two person work, the rest of the cast merely serves as background figures. I'm wondering though why someone like Peter Falk consented to a role that's confined to two scenes at the beginning and the end with no real opportunity for him to display his talents. Still for fans of Poitier or Darin or both this is a chance to see them both at their best.

As a kid, I never failed to catch this movie when it was on TV. Bobby D. steals the show as a nazi punk with big time mental problems. He played a similar role in" Captain Newman, M.D." but this one had more meat to it.The boy actor who played Bobby D. as a child is Barry Gordon. There is an interesting Jack Benny connection here. In a 1961 Jack Benny Show, Jack was casting a TV special about his life story. A little boy comes in to audition and Jack is pleased that his parents aren't with him probably because he can get the kid for less money.Then the boy actor's "agent" (Barry Gordon) storms in and makes demands on the surprised Benny. Jack immediately signs up Barry to play him as a child instead of the kid actor. Little Barry wowed the studio audience with a letter- perfect imitation of Benny's famous"Well!" complete with black suit and tie and eyeglasses. A few years later Benny did an episode where he was casting a movie about his life and Bobby D. was the guest star. This time Jack wanted Bobby to play him as a young man! It should also be noted that James Anderson who plays Barry/Bobby's sadistic butcher father in "Pressure Point" is the same actor who played the sadistic racist father in "To KIll a Mockingbird" which like "Captain Newman, M.D." featured a young actor called Robert Duvall as a catatonic.Mr. Anderson was always excellent in a malevolent role. Downright menacing I'd say. If Bobby had lived he might have tied Sinatra in the "legendary all-around entertainer" category.

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.