In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Written by Stirling Silliphant

Directed by Norman Jewison

40 films in! We’re nearly halfway!!

The 40th annual Academy Awards, held in 1968 for films released in 1967

This was a strange decade of films to win Best Picture. Of the last 10 films, 4 were musicals, 2 were epics of nearly 4 hours in length, and we saw the final switch to color films until Schindler’s List. There’s a lot of variety in the films, which makes it hard to pinpoint an overarching theme or movement throughout, although I don’t think variety is a bad thing. We’ve had gritty films before, but besides this film, In the Heat of the Night, the grittiest we get is maybe West Side Story, whose grit is slightly undermined by the fact that it’s a musical: yes, people die, but they also dance and snap in unison.

Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs

Looking over the list of what’s to come, In the Heat of the Night looks like it’s ushering a new wave of gritty films as we enter the turbulent end of the 60’s and into the 70’s. This isn’t the first film on this list to deal with racism, but it is the first to explicitly deal with racism between blacks and whites. Indeed, this film took no less than 10 minutes for its first instance of racism to occur, and its pretty relentless from there. Sidney Poitier stars as Virgil Tibbs, a black detective forced to assist an all-white police force in Mississippi solve a murder. Almost instantly, Tibbs bears the brunt of the underlying racism in Mississippi both from within the force and without. Rod Steiger leads the force as Chief Gillespie, who most often comes head to head with Tibbs.

The confrontation between Mr. Tibbs and Endicott

This is the first film I’ve seen Poitier in, and I really was impressed by his performance. Tibbs (excuse me, MR. Tibbs) is a man who has suffered many slings of racism in his life, and his anger and frustration boils just under the surface, just as Gillespie’s ignorance boils just under his. Poitier’s performance is powerful in its quiet simplicity interrupted with bouts of anger (I gasped out loud when, after being slapped by Endicott, a plantation owner, Tibbs slaps him right back). Steiger does great too, portraying a man struggling between what he knows is right and how he was brought up. The smile and nod he gives Tibbs at the film’s end doesn’t absolve him of his behavior throughout the movie (which, admittedly, was not as villainous as I suspected it would be), but it indicates that he could be on a path of changed behavior.

Rod Steiger as Chief Gillespie

The plot itself is fairly forgettable. A man is murdered, and everyone tries to figure out who did it, but nearly every scene is about displaying some new type of racism. Indeed, there were times that I forgot there was even a crime that had been committed, which makes the ending feel less resonant, because once we finally learn who did it, we really don’t care (also because the murderer had only been in two prior scenes before the revelation). The murder really becomes the film’s McGuffin, in that it’s spurring the plot along but not really having any influence on the plot itself.

Technically, the film is pretty good...there’s lots of interesting choices of shots (things like zooming in on a brake light), including some great juxtaposition between big wide shots and narrower, claustrophobic ones. This film is also notable in that it is the first major Hollywood color film to feature proper lighting to highlight a black actor, which helps show off every nuance of Poitier’s powerful performance.

It’s still the 60’s, so Hollywood is still struggling with how to depict racism (well, let’s be honest, it’s 2019 and Hollywood is STILL struggling (I’m coming for you soon, Green Book)), so while the film missteps sometimes, it’s doing it’s best (for the time). Without its excellent lead performances, this film would probably be fairly forgettable, but luckily, it shines, and begins to pave the way for a tumultuous new decade.

FINAL GRADE: B