The tale is a familiar one for American moviegoers; a devil-may-care young man is drawn to a grounded young woman, they part, he realizes he prefers stability to freedom, they reconcile. The interest for viewers today as well as 40 years ago lies in the protagonists' skin color: they are black, as is most everyone else on screen. And they live in the Deep South of the early 1960s, where the still-operative system of peonage conspired to keep African-Americans enslaved economically and beaten down emotionally.