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“In The Heat Of The Night” is one of those classics that sticks with you. Yes, it is a thriller movie with a murder at the center of it, but the film is not reliant on the mystery of “whodunnit” to deliver its thrills. That is the one thing that I forget every time I watch it again.
As one of the five Oscar winners, this movie is a true time capsule of the 1960s South. Watching it again during Oscar season makes me appreciate how the Academy sometimes gets it right. The best picture winners do tend to be more controversial, but some decisions are outright baffling even half a century later.
My greatest pain still is how the Academy thought it was acceptable to not give Sidney Poitier a nomination for this, his crowning jewel. Even a young Sidney would have been capable of winning and the omission of such an obvious statement as the film’s Southern Racism then and now is so palpable that it is infuriating.
Even today, old folks in the South root for the Carrol O’Connor-Howard Rollins TV series that adapted this movie and dumbed it down for the 80s and 90s audiences, almost a “post-racial” approach to a movie that was all about racism. But Norman Jewison’s film is on a different level altogether. It is an acting showcase that transformed the most knowledgeable and eloquent man in town into a Black citizen. A role Poitier played at his Matinee Idol pinnacle. So indeed, he was the best-looking man in the town too.
An outsider with finances and plans for a factory that could give employment to the backward Sparta, Mississippi gets killed. The new police chief (Best Actor Rod Steiger) is sufficiently new in the position to be desperate for suspects and frantic with possibilities.
A Black man in a suit is one of those who gets picked up. It’s hard to fathom the compel this movie gave in the ‘60s to audiences when it outturns the visitor, who is awaiting a train to head back home, who is actually a Philadelphia police detective. He keeps this information from the Yahoo cop (Warren Oates) who picked him up and instead utilizes it to embarrass the racist leader.
The film’s highlight is that the chief managed to determine that his Black suspect’s observations very clearly hint that the Black man is smarter than him. Even if the chief will not say it out loud, he is more than willing to badger Det. Virgil Tibbs’ boss in Philadelphia into getting him to “help” with the case so he can further his own agenda.
Tibbs reluctantly appears and, through gritted teeth, schooled the cops and the “doc” who was also the coroner, and the South in general with his skill and determination to put personal hate aside while solving the murder.
This is the first time one of these “noble” Black men actually has a spine. There are limits to what he will endure. The famous slap is classically reciprocated as Poitier’s Tibbs was the foil to small-town pathetic “Sleepytime Down South” laziness and the shorthand contempt that they offer. He was a criticism of “the way things have always been.”
It is now the turn of the industrialist’s widow “from up north” and tell what the rest of the world only speculated regarding what Tibbs could be saying under his breath.
“What monsters did the devil create you to be? Where is this place and what’s its purpose?”
Not this time not with Scott Wilson, a likely suspect profiled in “In Cold Blood”, “The Right Stuff,” and “Junebug.” They are not sticking the blame on somebody, whose only crime seems to be existing within their proximity. Not with a sharp-eyed officer that understands and sees the police “grabbing” for charges is more eager-policing.”
The film still emphasizes how deeply rooted racism is harbored within the without regions of the country, and the remnants of the film are enough to let one conclude that nothing will change for the better until bigotry is stamped out and every voice heard along with the citizen’s potential.
Gillespie is designed by Steiger to be a raging potpourri of resentment, sarcasm, and panic infused with rage. With nothing to lose, he aims to let a couple more “n words” at Tibbs. He can even let the redneck mob have their way, beating him to a blood pulp.
Steiger reminds the audience how unimpressed by this notion he is.
Poitier’s performance in this movie alone is worthy of an Oscar. It does seem to be a big deal 55 years later, however. Everything from his career, or rather his recent passing has made ‘In The Heat of the Night’ a classical.
He was a big enough star that guaranteed this movie was not filmed in the still-deadly-for-Black-people-South. Instead, Sparta Illinois stood in for Sparta Mississippi. He also fought to keep the line: which used to be controversial but is now unremarkable, “the slap heard around America” in every copy of the film, regardless of the screening location.
Finally, he is the one who should prompt you to convince older family members to steer clear of feeble murder-of-the-week appeasers and try some authentic Britain instead. Never forget, if Poitier’s name isn’t at the top and Ray Charles isn’t singing the theme song, go somewhere else.
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