Dutchman

Adapted from the explosive one-act play by Amiri Baraka, this intense chamber drama remains as provocative today as it was in 1966. In an empty New York City subway car, a sexually audacious white woman named Lula (Shirley Knight, winner of the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival) taunts Clay (Al Freeman Jr.), a mild-mannered Black man, with mocking flirtations and increasingly offensive race-baiting. When Lula pushes him to his breaking point, Clay’s furious response appears to provide cathartic liberation—unless it portends a far more tragic fate. Baraka’s script suffuses DUTCHMAN with combative innuendo and allegorical dream logic, amplified by the tense, cinema-verité style of Anthony Harvey, a longtime editor who shot his directorial debut with fearless command, expertly excavating America’s deepest racial taboos.