R.I.P., Paul Winfield

Paul Winfield, a fine fine actor, is dead.

My parents let me stay up late to see Sounder when I was about 9 or 10. That movie had an enormous impact on me. So enormous that even though I did not see that film again until a couple months ago, I remembered certain scenes almost frame for frame. I sat in my apartment, watching it recently, my eyes filled with tears almost the whole time.

Cicely Tyson is one of our national treasures. What she does doesn’t even look like acting half the time.

And Paul Winfield plays the vibrant hard-working husband of Cicely Tyson, the father of this farming family – trying to keep it all together. He goes out hunting every day with his young son, and his hunting dog, Sounder.

It never occurred to me until much much later to ask the question: Why is the movie called Sounder? It’s not about the hunting dog. At least not exactly.

And yet – the movie could not be called anything else.

I remember sitting in the living room at Paul Avenue, watching this horrible and unfair story unfold. The father sent away to prison (my young blood burned with the unfairness) – and the awful moment of Sounder disappearing … I thought I couldn’t take it. I thought I might have to go up into my room, and not watch the end.

The second to last shot of the film is emblazoned in my brain. It is so movingly done, so SIMPLY done, that it could not possibly be improved upon.

The green fields out the kitchen window, the sunlight beating down, the long winding dirt road up the hill … Cicely Tyson, face bathed in sweat, washing dishes at the window. She glances out, casually, not looking for anything in particular … and suddenly – at the top of a hill – you can see a figure. A small figure.

Too far away to see his features.

But she knows who he is. She knows her husband has returned.

And my God, she just drops everything and races out of the house and starts running, running, running, as fast as she can up that hill … and the kids start running after her …. and she is in an absolute abandonment of joy. It is astonishing. She’s not even laughing. She is in that emotional place where joy is so intense it actually feels like pain. God. It’s tremendous.

And Paul Winfield, now with a limp, and a walking stick, starts coming down the hill towards her, slowly, awkwardly … and then faster and faster … his body struggling to move as quickly as he wants it to.

The embrace. The family embrace.

I remember watching all of this as a little kid, feeling literally as though I were the Grinch, and my heart was pushing up out of my chest. I glanced over at my mother, who is not a “crier”, not really … and she was in tears. I knew then that what I had seen was unbelievable, I could trust my eyes, I could trust my Grinch-heart. This movie was IMPORTANT.

Winfield had a long and distinguished career.

But to me, he will always always be “the father in Sounder“.

Thanks for sharing your gift with all of us, Mr. Winfield. You were one of the best.