Claudine is a 1974 drama directed by John Berry from a script co-written by Lester and Tina Pine. The film stars Diahann Carroll, James Earl Jones, and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs. Unlike most Blaxploitation films released at that time, Claudine bucked the trend in reflecting Black America realistically.
Claudine is about a garbage collector named Roop (James Earl Jones) who becomes romantically involved with a Black woman named Claudine (Diahann Carroll) who works multiple jobs to raise 6 children by herself. Her daughter Charlene (Tamu Blackwell) is dating the wrong boy; her son Charles (Lawrence Hilton Jacobs) wants a vasectomy; another son wants to disappear. On top of all of this confusion, the Welfare office stops by Claudine’s apartment regularly to make sure that she doesn't have a man or a job. Roop is also single, but he is paying child support for 3 children from a previous marriage. As he becomes more deeply involved with Claudine and her children, Roop finds himself being forced to make hard decisions.
Claudine is a great film that’s even more remarkable considering where this country was in the time it was made, a film that honestly and without comedy relief looks at the challenges single Black mothers face such as racism, poverty, teenage pregnancy, depression and self-hatred. Most importantly, though, Claudine shows how the welfare system humiliates and punishes people it is supposed to help. With all the disparaging rhetoric we hear about women on Welfare including a President who labeled them "Welfare Queens,” this film gives the other side of the story.
With its great soundtrack, written and produced by the late Curtis Mayfield and performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips, Claudine is a time capsule of what growing up poor was like in the 70s. I don't know if you can find it on blu ray but I have it on DVD. Great film of what it used to be like growing up in the 70s.
