Claudine (1974) ****

Claudine (1974) is a beautiful, funny, heartfelt, soulful, and deeply humanist portrait of a struggling  family with an overwhelmed single mother (an incredible Diahann Carroll) at its center. As she raises six children on welfare in Harlem, she falls in love with a charming but flawed garbage collector (an electric James Earl Jones) and it further complicates her life. 

Claudine touches on systemic and working class problems but never gets preachy. It embraces drama and the seriousness of the family’s situation but never strays far from the humor that grounds it. It’s romantic (and also sexually frank) but in a way firmly rooted in reality (particularly because of the noteworthy performances). It’s a really wonderful, multifaceted movie—featuring a fantastic, propulsive soundtrack performed by Gladys Knight & The Pips and written by Curtis Mayfield—and I’d recommend it to anyone.