The classic controversial novel is now a motion picture.

Previously filmed in Argentina in 1951, black author Richard Wright's powerful race-conscious novel Native Son was remade in this barely released 1986 version. The story involves Bigger Thomas (Victor Love), an angry Depression-era Chicago black who hopes to elevate himself through his chauffeur's job with a prosperous white Gold Coast family. The family's daughter (Elizabeth McGovern) takes advantage of Bigger's servile status by ordering him to drive her to a rendezvous with her communist-activist lover (Matt Dillon). Their "parlor liberal" attitude both pleases and confuses Bigger, as do the girl's apparent sexual advances toward him. One evening, Bigger drives the girl home after she's gotten herself drunk. She flirts harmlessly with him in her bedroom; when her blind mother (Carroll Baker) stumbles onto the scene, the terrified Bigger, certain that he'll be accused of rape, tries to muffle the girl so she can't talk. He accidentally kills her, whereupon the panicky Bigger hides the body and tries to pin the girl's "kidnapping" on her lover. Tragedy piles upon tragedy before Bigger's climactic murder trial and execution; throughout, we are given the impression that this sorry state of affairs would never have taken place without the black-white tensions and divisiveness that existed in 1930s, and which still exist to this day. During the trial scene, TV talk host Oprah Winfrey makes a heavily-made-up cameo appearance as Bigger's mother. The whole scene has the earmarks of an "Oscar clip," but Oprah's excessive histrionics pale in comparison to her brilliant, well-modulated performance in the earlier The Color Purple. The 1986 version of Native Son was co-produced by PBS' American Playhouse.

Native Son (1940) is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black American youth living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.
While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright portrays a systemic inevitability behind them. Bigger's lawyer makes the case that there is no escape from this destiny for his client or any other black American, since they are the necessary product of the society that formed them and told them since birth who exactly they were supposed to be. "No American Negro exists," James Baldwin once wrote, "who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull." Frantz Fanon discusses this feeling in his 1952 essay L'Experience Vecue du Noir, or "The Fact of Blackness". "In the end," writes Fanon, "Bigger Thomas acts. To put an end to his tension, he acts, he responds to the world's anticipation."

Release Date: December 24, 1986

In Chicago during the Depression, an African-American man named Bigger Thomas is trying to improve his station in life through his job as chauffeur to a weathly white family. In addition to bossing Bigger around, the family's daugther also routinely make advances to him. One evening when she is drunkenly flirting with him in her bedroom, the girl's blind mother comes into the room, and Bigger, sure that he will be accused of rape, attempts to stiffle the girl, accidentally killing her. Panicked, Bigger hides her body and claims that she was kidnapped by her boyfriend, a communist activist. But Bigger is charged with the murder and ultimately executed.

Distrib: Cinecom

Boxoffice: $1,301,121 2014: $2,928,400