The value of Oscar winner 'Green Book'

I was watching the Oscars when a thought occurred to me: Why does Hollywood love interracial road trip movies?

Yes, I'm referring to -- among others -- "Green Book," this year's winner of the Oscar for best picture.

It stars Viggo Mortensen as Tony "Lip" Vallelonga, a blue-collar Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx, who takes on the unlikely job in 1962 of driving Donald Shirley, an African-American piano virtuoso of great renown played by Mahershala Ali, through a concert tour of the South during those last days of legal Jim Crow segregation in the South.

I was struck when I heard about the movie -- and again after I saw it -- by the similarities of its storyline to that of "Driving Miss Daisy," in which Morgan Freeman plays a chauffeur to Jessica Tandy's Daisy Wortham, an elderly Jewish widow living in segregated Atlanta.

I am not alone. At least one critic called "Green Book," appropriately, "Driving Miss Daisy II." Each of the two movies is essentially a two-person comedy-drama about an interracial relationship that starts off shaky in conflicts between personal attitudes and Jim Crow conventions. Despite their differences, each of the two unlikely couples soon develop an unexpected bond while confronting racism and other threats.

Or, for that matter, how about similarities to the 1968 winner of the best picture Oscar, "In the Heat of the Night"? Sidney Poitier plays black Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs, who is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, played by Rod Steiger, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Miss. After Tibbs proves his innocence, Gillespie awkwardly persuades him to help track down the real killer. Before the end -- spoiler alert -- they become friends!

Yet these staples of Hollywood storytelling have brought heat down on "Green Book" and "Driving Miss Daisy," among others, for what often is called the "white savior narrative." That's a popular name in cinema circles for a storytelling trope in which a white character rescues people of color from whatever plight they happen to be suffering, but also learns something valuable in the process about how we're really all the same, deep down.

That's why comparisons between "Green Book" and "Driving Miss Daisy" can light filmmaker Spike Lee's fuse. "Miss Daisy" took the best picture Oscar in 1990, the year he was edged out in the writing category for his controversial hit "Do the Right Thing," about tense racial relations in a Brooklyn neighborhood. "Every time somebody's driving somebody, I lose," quipped Spike at the post-Oscars news conference. Lee finally received his long-awaited Oscar on Sunday, although it was for his adapted screenplay for "BlacKkKlansman," not for best picture. That revelation sent Spike out of his seat and toward one of the exits, although he soon returned. "I thought I was courtside at the (Madison Square) Garden," he said later. "The ref made a bad call."

That's showbiz. Those who complain about such formulaic works as "Daisy" remind me of the reception that greeted the now-classic "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and a young Poitier, it was the first major movie at the time to depict an interracial marriage in a positive light.

Yet I remember how fashionable it was among members of my generation of students to ridicule the film as sadly dated, overly sentimental and downright corny. The filmmakers had made Poitier's character, in particular, so brilliant and accomplished it was hard for us youngsters to imagine any parents of any color rejecting him. For what? His shoes were too polished?

But I also remember some good advice I received from a wise reporter who had specialized in civil rights and women's rights issues. She advised me to appreciate such movies the way she did: as windows for most mainstream Americans to see a world outside their own. "You'd be surprised how many people never see interracial couples," she said. "A lot of white people don't see young black professionals in suits and ties. Movies can be a first step."

Indeed, that's the reason why interracial road trip movies are so popular. The entertainment value comes from seeing how a tense relationship can be transformed into a friendship, even across racial and cultural lines. Even if it's only on a movie screen, we like to see the world as we hope it can be -- and maybe will be.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)