Pressure Point (1962)

Told in flashback form, an older psychiatrist (Sidney Poitier) recalls his most difficult case to a young colleague (Peter Falk) who is frustrated over a particular case and wants to quit. The older doctor, who is black, recounts how twenty years earlier he was a prison psychiatrist treating a racist sociopath and Nazi sympathizer (Bobby Darin). Directed by Hubert Cornfield (NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY), this was produced by the dreaded Stanley Kramer and while he might not have directed it, his fingerprints are all over it. Its preachy tone and heavy handedness aside, Cornfield and his ace cinematographer Ernest Haller (GONE WITH THE WIND) do some wonderful visual things that make it more interesting than your usual civics lesson movie. Darin gives an intense performance, perhaps too intense as his performance could have been reined in a bit. Poitier, no surprise, is marvelous. With Lynn Loring, Carl Benton Reid, Mary Munday, James Anderson and Barry Gordon.