Sidney Poitier

Buck and the Preacher

Buck and the Preacher

With his rousingly entertaining directorial debut, Sidney Poitier, alongside actor-producer Harry Belafonte, helped rewrite the history of the western, bringing Black heroes to a genre in which they had always been sorely underrepresented. Combining boisterous buddy comedy with blistering, Black Power–era political fury, Poitier and a marvelously mischievous Belafonte star as a tough and taciturn wagon master and an unscrupulous, pistol-packing “preacher,” who join forces in order to take on the white bounty hunters threatening a westward-bound caravan of people recently emancipated from slavery. A superbly crafted revisionist landmark, Buck and the Preacher subverts Hollywood conventions at every turn and reclaims the western genre in the name of Black liberation.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1972
  • 103 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • English
  • Spine #1140

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New interview with Mia Mask, author of Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western
  • Behind-the-scenes footage featuring actor-director Sidney Poitier and actor-producer Harry Belafonte
  • Interviews with Poitier and Belafonte from 1972 episodes of Soul! and The Dick Cavett Show
  • New interview with Gina Belafonte, daughter of Harry Belafonte
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Aisha Harris

    New illustration by Sean Phillips

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New interview with Mia Mask, author of Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western
  • Behind-the-scenes footage featuring actor-director Sidney Poitier and actor-producer Harry Belafonte
  • Interviews with Poitier and Belafonte from 1972 episodes of Soul! and The Dick Cavett Show
  • New interview with Gina Belafonte, daughter of Harry Belafonte
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Aisha Harris

    New illustration by Sean Phillips
Buck and the Preacher
Cast
Sidney Poitier
Buck
Harry Belafonte
Preacher
Ruby Dee
Ruth
Cameron Mitchell
Deshay
Denny Miller
Floyd
Enrique Lucero
Native American chief
Julie Robinson Belafonte
Sinsie
Clarence Muse
Cudjo
Lynn Hamilton
Sarah
Credits
Director
Sidney Poitier
Story by
Ernest Kinoy
Drake Walker
Screenplay by
Ernest Kinoy
Produced by
Joel Glickman
Director of photography
Alex Phillips Jr.
Musical score composed and conducted by
Benny Carter
Featuring
Sonny Terry
Brownie McGhee

Current

Buck and the Preacher: Unsettled Land
Buck and the Preacher: Unsettled Land

Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, a western depicting Black cowboy heroes, allowed two of the industry’s most significant Black stars to reorient themselves as artists.

By ​Aisha Harris