Playing the Race Card

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The newest Bond girl has just jinxed herself.

In a recent article on the World Entertainment News Network, Halle Berry claimed that Brits look down on her because of her cross-cultural roots.

Berry, whose mother hails from Liverpool, also revealed that despite her success she still suffers racism in the (British) film industry.

One wonders to which "racist" British films she is referring?

Tony Richardson's 1961 masterpiece, A Taste of Honey, evoked the complex motions of a teenaged girl, Jo ( played by then 17 year old Rita Tushingham).

At once dreamy and pragmatic, vulnerable and optimistic, Jo is cruelly abandoned by her unloving mother and seamlessly falls in love with and becomes pregnant by a black sailor on leave.

The reality of his race becomes irrelevant - the heart of the movie is the sensitive relationship which evolves between Jo and her nurturing gay male roommate, Geoff (Murray Melvin).

In 1966, Mark Thackeray (Sidney Poitier) took on a job as a teacher in a disenfranchised London high school in To Sir, With Love.

One colleague persisted in making lame jokes about "black sheep" and "black magic", and several students dropped a slur or two.

But Poitier's "Sir" was indeed the first real Sir the students had ever encountered - a strong and dignified role model, skin-colour unimportant.

Neil Jordan's, 1986 film Mona Lisa exquisitely depicts George (Bob Hoskins) a dim-witted, volatile former hoodlum and his futile love for a classy, jaded black prostitute, Simone (Cathy Tyson).

George initially describes her to best pal Thomas (Robbie Coltrane) as "a tall, thin, black tart", but when Coltrane later repeats the phrase, her protector angrily adds, "and she's a Lady!"

Jordan creates another masterpiece in 1992's "The Crying Game". Jody (Forest Whitaker ) is captured by I.R.A. rebels, who refer to him as "an American soldier", or "a Yank", never as, "a black American soldier."

When Fergus (Stephen Rea) goes to London to meet Jody's ex-girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson), none of her colleagues or pals in The Metro Bar are surprised to see her dating a white man - the only shock is the movie's famous surprise.

Finally, in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies, Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn) ends up being much more compatible with Hortense Cumberbatch (Jeanne-Marie Baptiste) - the black daughter she had given away for adoption and who reappears - than she does with Hortense's white half-sibling, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook).

By contrast Hollywood movies are replete with talented black actors, but they are mostly type-cast. Didn't Halle herself play the wife of a (Black) death-row inmate in her last film, Monster's Ball?

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