In an episode of Norman Lear’s 1970s sitcom Good Times, the mother (Esther Rolle) and father (John Amos) raising their kids in the Chicago projects look for a movie to see on their date night, and the only thing showing that isn’t a blaxploitation outing is the 1974 romance Claudine. Twentieth Century Fox used that difference in order to sell the movie. In contrast to the badass poses struck in the ads for Shaft and Super Fly and Foxy Brown and Slaughter and Hell Up in Harlem and all the rest, the poster for Claudine showed a beaming extended family striding toward the camera above the tagline, “A heart and soul comedy. Can you dig it?” But far from the family-friendly sap that poster promised, Claudine, which has been released on DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection, reaches right back to the tough-nosed and wisedup attitudes that characterized American comedies and melodramas in the 1930s. Like those movies, it cuts right through Hollywood sentimentality, showing life as it’s lived by what the Golden Age British mystery novelist Henry Wade called “hardworked people.”

在诺曼·李尔（Norman Lear）1970年代的情景喜剧《好时光》（Good Times）中，母亲（埃斯特尔·罗尔（Esther Rolle））和父亲（约翰·阿莫斯（John Amos））在芝加哥项目中抚养孩子时，他们想找一部电影在他们的约会之夜看，而唯一显示的不是blaxploitation郊游是1974年的爱情片Claudine。二十世纪福克斯利用这种差异来出售电影。与哈林区（Shalem）的《轴》，《超级蝇》，《狡猾的布朗》，《杀手》和《地狱》以及其他所有广告中的坏蛋姿势相反，克劳丁的海报展示了一个充满喜气的大家庭，朝标语上方的相机大步迈进：“一颗心和灵魂喜剧。你能挖一下它么？” 但是与海报所承诺的亲密家庭树液不同，Claudine已作为Criterion Collection的一部分以DVD和Blu-ray的形式发行，追溯到1930年代美国喜剧和情节剧的典型刻薄和明智的态度。像那些电影一样，它贯穿好莱坞的感性，展现了黄金时代英国神秘小说家亨利·韦德（Henry Wade）所说的“勤奋的人们”所过的生活。