By its description, Claudine comes dangerously close to sounding like a black version of Yours, Mine and Ours, a family comedy where real problems are pushed aside to concentrate on petty squabbles and romantic differences. Claudine and Roop have no romantic problems; they're an solid item from their first date. Although we're spared the worst the ghetto can dish out, their lives and anxieties actually bear some relation to the real world. There had been a place for fantastic films like For Love of Ivy, where a housemaid is wooed by a dreamboat black gambler who looks like Sidney Poitier and has the world by the tail. But in 1974, black audiences and curious whites were ready for something with more bite.

Claudine maintains a fairly light touch and a decidedly sitcom feel, as Carrol and her brood of kids all take different busses to school and work. The oldest boy is becoming an activist, and the oldest girl is taking a familiar and dangerous route by sleeping with her boyfriend. Claudine copes with these problems like a real person, not a movie star: she screams, begs, cries and hits. She only has so much control over her children - although the movie doesn't take her to task for being AWOL bedding Roop every night of the week - as evidenced by her inability to keep the kids from swearing at the table. Even though they're frank in their talk about sex, the film stresses that they're nice kids, that the family is a functioning unit. Claudine doesn't say love conquers all, but it does indicate that as a sole weapon, it has a lot of power.

Claudine is mature enough to acknowledge the fact that people, even teenagers, have sex, and no amount of puritan disapproval is going to stop it. In poverty, families of all races end up with a lot of children to raise with a shortage of resources and energy. Claudine has to deal with her daughter's plight, being just a child, yet jumping on the treadmill of having children of her own in poverty.

Zola would consider the story to be substantially sweetened. There are no drugs or crime involved, that would immediately dissolve the family into death and despair. We see prostitutes, and about the worst Roop has to deal with in the oldest boy is some backstreet gambling. But the film isn't about hopelessness. It has a positive air about it, and it remains a solid film about the kind of family life real people lead.

The picture is one of those 70s films that has some nudity, yet is rated PG. Curiously, its director is John Berry, one of the more notable blacklisted directors. He directed John Garfield's last movie before they both found themselves unemployable in 1951. After a few years in France, he returned to the states to work his way back up in television.

Fox Home Video's DVD of Claudine is a decent transfer but has unaccountably been presented flat. What's the matter, Fox, aren't black people entitled to 16:9 enhancement? The image crops off nicely on a widescreen set. There's a trailer, but the bonus of note is a commentary track with James Earl Jones, Diahann Carroll, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, George Tillman Jr. and Dan Pine.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Claudine rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: Commentary track
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: February 20, 2003