Porgy and Bess (film)

Porgy and Bess is a 1959 American musical film directed by Otto Preminger. It is based on the 1935 opera of the same name by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin, which is in turn based on Heywards 1925 novel Porgy, as well as Heywards subsequent 1927 nonmusical stage adaptation, cowritten with his wife Dorothy. The screenplay for the film, which turned the operatic recitatives into spoken dialogue, was very closely based on the opera and was written by N. Richard Nash.

Set in the early 1900s in the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina, which serves as home to a black fishing community, the story focuses on the titular characters, crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goatdrawn cart, and the drugaddicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully. While high on cocaine supplied by Sportin Life, Crown kills Robbins after the latter vanquishes him in a craps game Bess urges Crown to flee. Sportin Life suggests she accompany him to New York City, an offer Bess declines. She seeks refuge with her neighbors, all of whom refuse to help her. Porgy finally agrees to let her stay with him.Bess and Porgy settle into domestic life together and soon fall in love. Just before a church picnic on Kittiwah Island, Sportin Life once again approaches Bess, but Porgy warns him to leave her alone. Bess wishes to stay with Porgy, since he cannot attend the picnic because of his disability, but he urges her to go. After the picnic ends, and before Bess can leave, Crown, who has been hiding in the woods on the island, confronts her. She initially struggles to resist him but Crown rapes her. The others, not knowing exactly what has happened, leave and return to the mainland. ........

Source: Wikipedia