Restored by StudioCanal as part of its Vintage Classics collection, One Potato, Two Potato (1964) has never looked or sounded better. While independent American cinema can arguably be traced back to Chaplin, it was the late ’50s and ’60s that saw an explosion of cutting-edge films and stories emerge. One Potato, Two Potato is one of those cutting-edge films, yet it remains a rarely discussed pioneer.
At the 1968 Academy Awards, Katharine Hepburn celebrated a Best Actress win for Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a movie hailed as groundbreaking in its discussions on interracial relationships in a segregated United States of America. The film would go on to win further awards, primarily for its predominantly white cast and crew. However, Sidney Poitier did walk away with a Fotogramas de Plata for Best Foreign Performer in 1969, and Beah Richards received several nominations in the supporting actress categories.
I wonder how director Larry Peerce and writers Orville H. Hampton and Raphael Hayes felt watching the awards recognition of a film hailed as groundbreaking, when just a few years before, their independent film, One Potato, Two Potato (1964), had boldly explored a loving interracial relationship caught in the headlights of racism, oppression and institutional discrimination. That’s not to say One Potato, Two Potato didn’t celebrate award nominations for its screenplay and a win for Barbara Barrie at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. However, by 1968, it had largely been overlooked as a groundbreaking independent film that explored the impact of American racial divides on individuals and families.
Barbara Barrie plays Julie Cullen, a young, white woman divorced from her husband (Richard Mulligan), who left her with their daughter, Ellen, not long after her birth. As the film opens, Julie meets a colleague at work, Frank, played by Bernie Hamilton, and it’s not long before a friendship blooms that has the spark of something more. However, there is a barrier to the development of their romance. Julie is white, and Frank is black. It’s not a barrier they have erected; it sits at the heart of the community and the society into which they were born.
Their families warn them about crossing that barrier, worried that they will never be accepted as a couple, and that discrimination will haunt their lives if they choose to embrace their love. But love is love, and after much soul searching, neither Julie nor Frank is willing to let go of their new bond.
Julie and Frank get married, and with Ellen, they move in with Frank’s parents. As the ice between them and their in-laws slowly thaws, thanks to the couple’s love, they find a new sense of harmony. Soon, Julie is pregnant, and the new arrival, a boy, further breaks down the barriers between Julie and Frank’s parents. All is well, and everyone is happy and content, despite the obstacles they face, until Julie’s ex-husband, Joe, returns seeking to establish a relationship with the daughter he abandoned years before.
When Julie’s husband becomes aware of Frank’s race, Julie’s new son and Ellen’s new home, his racist beliefs and attitudes go into overdrive, and despite not wanting to see his daughter years before, he initiates court proceedings for legal custody with devastating results.
One Potato, Two Potato is no “Hollywood story” of love defying oppression; it’s gritty and realistic, its visual aesthetic and performances rooted in a ‘kitchen-sink’ realism usually the preserve of British pictures of the time. From the outset, Peerce, Hampton, and Hayes are interested in the intersections among the characters. From the oppression of single mothers to social views on divorce, and a court system rigged in favour of white men, conversations on racism may sit at the heart of One Potato, Two Potato, but many other layers of oppression and control intersect with Frank and Julie’s journey. The final scenes further demonstrate Peerce, Hampton, and Hayes’ mission to speak truth to power, as we are offered a truly heartbreaking but honest end to the journey that once again defies the American obsession with happy endings.
Now restored by StudioCanal as part of its Vintage Classics collection, One Potato, Two Potato has never looked or sounded better. While independent American cinema can arguably be traced back to Chaplin, it was the late ’50s and ’60s that saw an explosion of cutting-edge films and stories emerge. One Potato, Two Potato is one of those cutting-edge films, yet it remains a rarely discussed pioneer.
One Potato, Two Potato secured a US distributor only following its success at Cannes, a sign of the nervousness surrounding its themes in the United States of America. Peerce’s film was groundbreaking and ahead of its time, in a country still reeling from the assassination of President Kennedy, in a year where the Civil Rights Act was finally signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson despite many states opposing it. Yet a few years later, the film had all but vanished, with little conversation regarding its legacy or impact.
There’s no doubt that it was overshadowed by Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, released a few years later, which, like Philadelphia (1993), was hailed as groundbreaking despite the independent films that paved the way to its success. Now, as we look back, there is no doubt that One Potato, Two Potato deserves to reclaim its place as one of the most honest, urgent, and bold films to have emerged from the American independent film community of the early 1960s.
StudioCanal will release One Potato, Two Potato on digital and Blu-ray for the first time on October 13. Pre-order now.
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