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Pinky Movie Review

Pinky is a 1949 drama film directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jeanne Crain, Ethel Waters and Ethel Barrymore. It’s a very problematic, but mostly solid social drama.

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“The expressed wishes of the dead should not be set aside

to gratify the greed or the prejudice of the living“

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Pinky, a nurse, who has denied her identity that she is a black woman, recognizes her responsibility after a series of incidents and dares to spare her lover, Tom, for the welfare of her folks. This is one of those social dramas from the late forties that must have been very important back in this time period, but now its impact has been muted due to its unwillingness to deal with its subject matter in a more forceful and direct manner.

Elia Kazan directed this movie two years after Best Picture winner ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ and the two share that preachy element that is rather dated today. But this movie lacked the admirable conviction of that classic film as it failed to properly explore race relations of the time. Most of the plot consists of contrivances that prevented the screenplay from ever becoming particularly sophisticated.

I did not care for the courtroom drama third act at all. It was standard practice back then to finish off a movie like this, so it felt tiresome and clichéd. The beginning also could have better established our heroine. But the middle section was actually quite strong as this is where the character arcs and relationship drama were best utilized.

It was a very bad idea to cast Jeanne Crain in the role of a black woman who can pass as white. The original choice of Lena Horne would have been much better. Crain was nominated for her work here, but her performance was easily the weakest of the three nominated ones. She’s fine, but not fully convincing in this complex role and her character was underwritten.

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But Ethel Barrymore was reliably excellent and charismatic while Ethel Waters was so lovely and endearing as Dicey Johnson. She was the best part of the movie for sure. Pinky does have some solid dialogue and a couple of very moving sequences, but it is also quite preachy at times and behaving as if it’s very brave when in fact it is quite timid. The best scenes in the middle section promised a much stronger movie that unfortunately never fully came into being. Technically, the movie is quite solid, though not remarkable at anything that it does.