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Films about disabilities — what are your favorites?

by Beth

Charly movie poster, courtesy of ABC PicturesAl Pacino won an Oscar for Scent of a Woman, Dustin Hoffman for Rainman, Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot, and John Voight for Coming Home. Marlee Matlin won best actress for Children of a Lesser God, and plenty of actors and actresses have been nominated for their roles portraying a person with a disability too: Russell Crowe was nominated for best Actor in A Beautiful Mind, Salma Hayek was nominated for best actress in Frieda, Mary McDonnell was nominated for best actress in Passion Fish and Judi Dench for best supporting actress in Iris.

Disability-focused movies are nothing new. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has so many of them in their collection that they have been spending the entire month of October exploring the ways disabilities have been portrayed in film. From the TCM Web site:

The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film features more than 20 films ranging from the 1920s to the 1980s. Each night’s collection will explore particular aspects, themes, or types of disability, such as blindness, deafness and psychiatric or intellectual disabilities. In addition, one evening of programming will focus on newly disabled veterans returning home from war.

Lawrence Carter-Long has been joining TCM host Ben Mankiewicz at 7:00 p.m. Central Time every Tuesday in October to discuss the films they’re showing, which include:

  • An Affair to Remember (1957) Deborah Kerr’s romantic rendezvous with Cary Grant is nearly derailed by a paralyzing accident.
  • A Patch of Blue (1965) Elizabeth Hartman as a blind white girl who falls in love with a black man played by Sidney Poitier.
  • Butterflies Are Free (1972) Edward Albert as a blind man attempting to break free from his over-protective mother.
  • Johnny Belinda (1948) Jane Wyman as a “deaf-mute” forced to defy expectations.
  • The Miracle Worker (1962) Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller.
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) Jack Nicholson as a patient in a mental institution and Louise Fletcher as the infamous Nurse Ratched.
  • The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Post-War drama starring Fredric March, Myrna Loy and real-life disabled veteran Harold Russell.
  • Charly (1968) Cliff Robertson as a man with an intellectual disability who questions the limits of science after being turned into a genius.

As an added bonus (and a first for Turner Classic Movies) all of these films are being presented with both closed captioning and audio description (via secondary audio) for audience members with auditory and visual disabilities. Tune in this Tuesday, and in the meantime, if you have any favorite movies about people with disabilities, please leave a comment here to let me know. I am, ahem, all ears.


 

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  1. Minerva Says:

    October 23rd, 2012 at 1:06 am

    Passion Fish is one of my favorite movies. John Sayles was brilliant.

  2. Dennis Says:

    October 23rd, 2012 at 1:05 am

    The one “disability movie” I saw andreally learned a lot from is Murderball! If you haven’t seen this documentary – rent it now! It follows the professional and private lives of the 2004 U.S. Wheelchair Rugby team.