In its transference from stage to screen, Lorraine Hansberry's deeply moving play about an impoverished but indestructable Negro family, has, alas, lost more than it has gained. On stage, the play literally whipped its way across the footlights to lash the audience with its verve and vigour. On film, its effect is at once less urgent and personal, and one seriously feels the lack of breathing space needed between us, the spectators of the action, and the action itself. We tend, as it were, to be too near the drama to ever feel it properly….
This is not to say, of course, that the film is un-entertaining…. [The] vivid flounce of Miss Hansberry's exciting dialogue [makes] it thoroughly worthwhile on any level of viewing. But one just wished that the producers might have had a little more courage and made their adaptation a more expansive one: one with a shade more filmic fluency to it. If they had, I feel that they may well have had a little masterpiece on their hands….
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