1 hr and 50 min, color, 1967
Landmark movies do not have to
be super spectacular creations. “In the
Heat of the Night”, released fifty years ago this summer (yes, another half
century anniversary), did not introduce any new cinematic devices or any
technical innovations or original narrative techniques. Viewers did not set new records in
attendance; crowds were not lined up at box offices in serpentine formation
around the block. But the picture did sell,
enough to start a groundswell of interest that led to Oscar victory and did make
an unmistakable impact upon the American movie audience’s mind. It was what it signaled that set it apart and
drew earnest attention from all over the country. To put it precisely, in the words of Malcolm
Boyd, it was in this one that “the black man became a man” on screen at last,
in every sense of the term. The African
American male image has never been the same since in motion pictures.
Sidney
Poitier is a proud, professionally competent northern police detective, a
homicide expert, traveling through Sparta, Mississippi, who gets roped into
showing bigoted small town sheriff Rod Steiger how to solve a murder and throws
Jim Crow racism back into the redneck teeth with a flourish. Director Norman Jewison and Screenwriter
Stirling Silliphant, working from a John Ball novel, are our benefactors. The film is full of high tension face-offs,
and almost every scene is memorable. It
not only portrayed the entrenchment of Southern bigotry at the time but ripped
into it and exposed its raw core. And it
did not do this in the garb of a docudrama or a narrated, topical
illustration. It was staged as one might
stage any conventional who-done-it, served up with a heaping helping of police
detective work and undercover investigating.
But its detective hero just happened in this case to be a man whose
racial identity pushed buttons that set off a chain reaction of enmity and
violent aggressiveness.
This was not by a long shot
Sidney Poitier’s first starring role. He
has been in films since the early 1950s and in most of them he has played a
lead. (The most memorable of those is
“Lilies of the Field”, which I recently reviewed.) But this was the first case in which the film
was devoted intentionally and conspicuously to the red hot button issue of
Southern styled racism. By 1967 most of
the landmark civil rights legislation of the Johnson years had already been
enacted. The 1963 March on Washington
was recent history and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the
Lincoln Memorial was fresh in most Americans’ minds. But of course what was on the books and what
was being enforced were worlds apart.
Jim Crow still ruled the South, especially in small town and rural
areas.
Many of you reading this may be
unfamiliar with the film for the simple reason that it came out before you were
born or at least well before you were of an age when you would have been aware
of its existence; maybe it got lost in the torrent of world events or of
personal struggles of your own. I myself
was only thirty-four when I first viewed it at a theater on Times Square. It was an afternoon in the middle of a week,
with very few people present. That was
nothing unusual at a matinee, except for the fact that the rest of the viewers
in the audience were all black, and they were so exercised by what they saw
that I began to fear that maybe I, the lone whitey, would not get out of there
alive. (I did, of course! They acted as if I was not even present, and
that pleased me no end.)
Can we now imagine how
cathartic as well as electrifying it must have been for them to see a black man
stand up to the white baron of the community, returning the man’s facial slap
without hesitation? That was a first,
and it tore through the air. The big
shot is so startled by what this supposedly inferior black man has done that he
is reduced to tears. What gets unmasked
in this scene is the essence of so-called Southern white paternalism. We see that it is nothing more than a thin
veneer loosely disguising hate, thuggery, and paranoia. The black folk who saw it on first release
must also have found catharsis in the scene in which three redneck hooligans
gang up on Poitier in a garage, and this black Philadelphia citizen fights them
back with courage and expertise. This is
one of two scenes actually in which the detective comes perilously close to
getting lynched. But he does not kow-tow
for an instant.
Not that the man is a
crusader. He is a reluctant
participator. He is on his way to visit
his mother when he is corralled by a twist of circumstances into taking charge
of the investigation. He is not out to
prove anything, other than the identity of the killer. He simply believes in being thorough and
professional in the performance of a duty, regardless of the time or
place. In the larger sense he has
nothing to prove and is not out to impress the white establishment or curry
favor.
Poitier may be the focus of
attention all the way through, but he is not the only leading player. Rod Steiger is mammoth in the role of the
sheriff, who is conflicted over the investigation Poitier is doing. He feels pressure from two sides. The white oligarchs of the town do not want
Poitier to show them up; Steiger is ready to put him on the train and ship him
out. But the wife (Lee Grant) of the
murdered man, an industrialist from the north who has come south to build a
factory, has other ideas. After seeing
how hasty and incompetent the sheriff is in arresting a suspect who Poitier
proves is innocent, she declares that she wants the black detective kept on the
case until the true felon is caught, threatening to pack up her dead husband’s
engineers and equipment and leave the area, if her wish is not met. The factory is something of huge economic
importance to the life of the community, and the bigwigs need to keep her
appeased. And there is Steiger right in
the shaky middle – the horns of a daunting, king-size dilemma!
Steiger was quite brilliant
with anything he did, though he was never a box office champion. He was something very special and quite
versatile. He might have second billing
here, but he makes something prodigious out of this easily rattled, nervous,
slouchy, gum chewing officer of the law.
Not only do we get to observe his chief’s performance on the job, but in
an intimate scene the screenwriter takes us into his inner mind to show us how
lonely and wretched he is. By film’s end
he has come to feel a quiet respect for Poitier. Steiger’s work in the movie earned him a
well-deserved Oscar, and the work of the combined cast and crew earned the Best
Picture trophy.
The settings are so believable
that I sometimes get the feeling while watching that I am smelling the town,
smelling the dusty roads, smelling the jail and police station, smelling the
depot. There is nothing phony about the
visuals and nothing half disclosed about the reactionary fear of the isolated
town. And a low keyed jazzy score by the
celebrated Quincy Jones on the soundtrack adds its rich flavor as well as the voice
of Ray Charles singing the title song.
Not often have I ever pleaded
with my readers for their attention to what I am highlighting, but this time I
cannot think of a better word for what I want to say. I plead with everyone reading this who
has never seen “In the Heat of the Night” to check it out from Netflix and
screen it, or if you remember once seeing it but the memory is hazy, check it
out and refresh yourself on a vital aspect of American life and history. I am saddened to have to say that it still
reflects upon a very real danger dogging at our nation’s heels. Hate crimes and enflamed racism are still
very much with us, as recent killings that have made front page news so
painfully demonstrate. Jim Crow may not
be as dominant as he once was, but he is still lurking around. See this and educate yourself a little more
on the subject.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To know
about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.
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