Claudine (Diahann Carroll) is a single mother living in Harlem with her six children. She has to work extremely hard to make ends meet, with her meagre earnings from her job as a domestic worker for a rich suburban family not being anywhere close to enough to support her family, and thus she has to rely on welfare to ensure a good life for her children, which involves some necessary deception on her part. She soon meets Rupert (James Earl Jones), better known as “Roop”, a charismatic garbage collector who catches Claudine’s eye, and with whom she soon falls in love. Roop brings a great deal of joy to Claudine’s life, including showering her with gifts and becoming the father figure her children always needed, even if they are hostile to his presence at first. However, his life is far from perfect, and whether it be his unintentional avoidance of his own children who live out of town and don’t want to see him or the fact that Claudine is hesitant to publicly admit to their relationship for the sake of retaining her welfare income, which would otherwise be rendered redundant if she were to enter into a relationship. However, the pair seem to find a way to make it work, and embracing all the challenges of contemporary romance is certainly not easy, especially when everyone else seems to be against the notion of pure romance. Nothing seems to be able to tear Claudine and Roop apart, with their devotion to each other, and they soon make the realization that they are the other’s salvation, keeping them together, and allowing them to navigate the trials and tribulations of love in modern times.

Claudine on the surface does not appear to be a major work, yet throughout the course of it, we start to understand the unquestionable importance of the film. A film that has a great sense of self-awareness, and a very clear purpose in what it was trying to convey, which it does so with an immense amount of heart and an abundance of tactful elegance its portrayal of reality. It is one of those films made purely to celebrate life and to show that even beneath a tough situation, there is always hope that things can eventually get better if one actually possesses the tenacity to handle every challenge that comes our way. Claudine wears its heart on its sleeve – everything about this film, which is otherwise a charming and wonderfully sweet excursion into the lives of ordinary folk, is executed with an incredible amount of precision, with believable characters and a meaningful approach to the story. A tremendously grounded film about love and survival in the modern world, it is anchored by two performances that would be otherwise career-defining turns for any other actors, but serve as relatively par for the course for the two leads (a testament to the talents of the two performers), and told with such authentic sentimentality, we just can’t help feeling so deeply in love with Claudine in the same way Roop does, and much like him, it is very difficult to let it go, because we know how special a film it is, and how much it is actually worth.

Diahann Carroll commands the screen in Claudine with a conviction rarely glimpsed in a film like this – it still bewilders me how this isn’t considered one of the defining roles of the 1970s, as what she is given here is one of the most genuine portrayals of an African-American woman ever committed to screen. Carroll herself is a performer who broke boundaries, and throughout her career she broke new ground for black actresses to be given roles that were not embedded with stereotypes or defined by particular idiosyncrasies that were normally levelled against an entire racial group based on generalized beliefs. Claudine Price is a character who we can’t help but absolutely adore, and through Carroll’s committed performance, we are able to venture into every recess of her personality, where her flaws are not hidden, but rather are openly embraced, almost as if to remark on the fact that she is an ordinary woman, and just like all of us, she has imperfections, which don’t only fail to define us, but sometimes are the parts of us that make us who we are. It is a far more complex portrayal than I’d think anyone expected – Claudine is a true renaissance woman, working as hard as she can in order to not only survive but give her children the best life possible. The best part of Carroll’s performance is that she never relies on anything even vaguely cliched in portraying the titular character, always opting to go towards a certain authenticity that may be somewhat of a betrayal to those expecting a more upbeat performance, but resulting in one of the year’s most beguiling performances, one without any trace of spuriousness or inauthenticity. Groundbreaking in its own small but memorable way, Carroll’s performance here is truly wonderful and represents one of the most important watershed moments in African-American storytelling, one where nuanced and fascinating characters can be played without having to rely on trite and often unnecessary stereotypes.

Acting across from Carroll is James Earl Jones, an individual I expect the majority of us are not only familiar with but in complete awe of. Before he was the acting stalwart he is known for today, the beloved elder-statesman that defined the childhoods of many generations, Jones was a young actor working through an industry that, at the time, didn’t have much use for him. Yet, armed with a particular set of skills and a booming voice that has quite literally pervaded film history, Jones set a path for himself to become one of the most important actors of his generation. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I found Jones to not only be a worthy scene-partner to Carroll, but also the slightly better of the two performances, purely because he is the character we want to get to know more – whether this is a result of the way the character was written (as a charming but enigmatic man trying to make his own way in the world), or Jones’ terrific performance, where he finds the humanity in an otherwise archetypal character, repurposed here not only to be the mere love interest, but someone on his own journey, remains to be seen. Yet, picking favourites from the two is a daunting task, because not only are both Carroll and Jones individually brilliant, their chemistry is incredible – they play off each other with such undeniable each, oscillating between carefree and concerned, two people in the prime of their lives, trying to harness the most of their final days of youthfulness, without neglecting the fact that they have their own responsibilities that cannot go ignored. It is in the balance that we find the profound brilliance of this film.

Claudine is a film that is a lot more than it is marketed as, and even by the end of it, we find that it defies a lot of traditional classifications. On the surface, it would appear to just be an upbeat and charming comedy about a woman’s attempts to balance her family and a burgeoning relationship, and through the process, learning about herself. Yet, beneath this innocuous veneer is something a lot deeper, a quality to this film that I don’t think anyone was expecting. This is a film that seems to be mainly built upon some degree of realism, and considering it takes place in the early 1970s, the filmmakers were clearly intent on portraying life as it was, which meant including themes of poverty and racial matters in a way that didn’t only acknowledge how they would be challenges for people like Claudine, Roop and their respective families, but to comment on them meaningfully, showing them to us in a way that was earnest and direct, without bringing down the endearing nature of the film. Claudine earns its stripes as an impressive achievement purely on the way in which it juggles the tone of the film – it is a sweet and comical romantic romp with no shortage of hilarious and heartfelt moments, but one that is grounded within a version of reality that doesn’t ignore the problems that afflicted people like our protagonists – there are no heroes or villains in Claudine, and not even a character like the persistently pedantic social worker, who would otherwise be a nuisance, is portrayed to be all that bad. Everyone is on their own journey, and in this film, we are privy to just a few of them.

Essentially, Claudine is a film about survival, and one that focuses on desperate times calling for desperate measures, although it never dares to put its main characters in a position that would go against their strong morals. This is a wholesome film, one that presents us with a variety of interesting characters that may not be particularly noteworthy in terms of the kind of people they are, but are shown to be good, hardworking individuals existing in a society that is often against them. They are searching for some success, but are willing to settle for life’s smallest and most inconsequential pleasures. It is a very unconventional love story, where the central conflict is not tension embedded within traditional romantic strife, but rather in the way a relationship may struggle to flourish in situations that could impinge upon one’s social mobility and ability to survive in a harsh climate. It is often a heartwrenching film, but the soulfulness of the film compensates for the more downbeat moments. Claudine is a quaint film, and one that thrives on its immense heart, and flourishes on its understanding of the human condition, showing us the triumphs of resilience, and the limitless potential of tenacity when it comes to difficult situations. Funny, heartfelt and genuine to a fault, Claudine is a wonderful little gem of a film, and a wonderful exercise in the intersections between romantic comedy and social realism, which it executes with the same deft precision that makes this one of the most moving films of its time.