Has how the movie is perceived changed over the years?

This movie was seen as a bold statement, as courageous for Hollywood. Isn't that absurd? But at the time, it was hailed as courageous. It wasn't, in any way, shape, or form but media covering Hollywood swallowed it hook, line, and sinker whatever the studios fed them, regardless of the rottenness of the product. (This is pretty much true today, look at ET, CNN, other show biz coverage, fawning over celebrities. Bigger business now than ever before.) Everything about GWCTD is awful. Kathryn Herrod who played the milky white daughter has stated she thought her role was ridiculous, just a clueless, brainless ditz, like most of the movie. Sidney Potier was made to look like a jerk, a distinguished doctor, yet cowering in front of his parents. It's idiotic. Recall the scene when a delivery boy comes to the back door, he and the maid or whatever she is, start dancing. That's Hollywood's idea of being hip. What an embarassment all around!! This laughable movie should be revisted. Have Quentin Tarantino direct it. He's got just the right take on race.

At the time the film would be seen as bold, controversial and ahead of its time.

Its that man again!!

Real 4th grade anecdote from the year 1968-69:
I attended public school in a farming community outside of a very intellectually liberal city. (My Dad had graduated from the university in that city and considered himself a liberal.) There were no non-anglos in my grade and likely not in my school or the whole town, perhaps.

My classroom teacher, seemingly out of the blue, started talking about why whites and blacks should not intermarry. It was OK to date, she said, but not marriage, her reason being one generation of kids could come out white and the next black, even if the parents were white. I did not understand the relevance of this discussion and had forgotten about it until seeing this movie recently. The teacher was probably around 60 years old. (And who knows where she got her genetics from?)

I suppose my kids, raised in another part of the country in a community with many different races and cultures, were to time travel back to my childhood, they might think society rather odd . . .

Because the world has changed, I definitely believe it affects how the movie is perceived. Bpth socially and artistically: Movie-goers are much more sophisticated about the dramatic and/or technical elements they expect from a movie than they were 40-50 years ago and I think today's society is more socially savvy. I am really impressed with how well history and human issues have been taught to my kids in the local public schools, this is from a parent who started a life-long love of learning history and other topics from my school years.

To me, the marriage seems a little impulsive. What could Poitier's character possibly see in Joey's childish and ignorant character. It totally undercuts the significance of their union. Surely, African Americans today are wondering why he's marrying "beneath" himself, while the film--controversial for its time--seems to suggest that he's marrying "above" himself and that the only way to "equalize" their union is by focusing so much on his accomplishments and giving no attention to hers.

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not that I'm racist or against interracial dating but this movie imo bore the hell out of me

Noir Man

Attitudes have definitely changed since then. It was illegal before the case of Virginia vs. Loving in many states. According to a black friend of mine who lived in Europe a while during those days, they would have had a problem there, also. But even now, where I live in the South, most white people would not be happy about their daughter marrying a white man, and they look askance at mixed couples.

Sure, inter-racial dating is more common now, but that doesn't mean that absolutely everyone is OK with it. I happen to have a (platonic) female friend who is mixed-race (half-black), and I (as a white person) have had issues in visiting her apartment building. Sometimes the security guy on duty, who happens to be black, will refuse to acknowledge me when I show up at the desk. I end up having to call my friend on the telephone to tell her I am there, because the security guy is clearly miffed at my presence there. It's hard to believe that if I were a black person, I would get the same poor treatment, at least in this situation.