Day 28: I Have the Money, Which is the Motive, and the Body Which is Dead!

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)

Directed by Norman Jewison

Starring Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant

When a wealthy white man turns up murdered in the small town of Sparta, Mississippi, the first suspect the police bring in is a well-dressed black man named Virgil Tibbs (Poitier).  Of course, being Mississippi in the late sixties, no one bothers to actually question Virgil about this – black man from out of town kills rich white man.  Case closed.   However, while being interrogated by Chief Gillespie (Steiger), it comes to light that Virgil is himself a police officer from Philadelphia, who was in town to visit his mother.  He also happens to be a homicide expert.  And seeing as how there’s an unsolved murder, Gillespie reluctantly asks for assistance from Mister Tibbs.  And Virgil is equally reluctant to help.

Everyone knows about the deep South in the late sixties.  The established order of segregation was slowly but surely being dismantled.  But many Southerners weren’t just reluctant to let go of this way of life; they were ready to fight to keep things the way they were.  It was as if a second Civil War was brewing, and in many ways, it was.  Several Civil Rights activits were murdered.  Lynchings were becoming more and more common.  A church in Alabama was bombed, leaving four little girls dead.  The South was a hotbed of violence and hatred, and anyone who supported Civil Rights for the black community – regardless of their race – was a target.

There are a lot of movies out there about injustice, but many of them become sermons; telling the audience what they need to do after they leave the theater.  In the Heat of the Night offers no solutions.  It simply shows things they way they were.  Here the emphasis is not on how to cure the ills of society, but how these ills affect the characters.  Here we have an outsider (and a black outsider, at that) who has further uspet the established order of a community with nothing more than his mere presence.  Virgil Tibbs tries to do his job to the best of his ability, even when no one in the town wants to let him.  Even Chief Gillespie would rather put Virgil on the first train out of town than have him working his town.  But the fact that a black man could be so good at his job is a foreign concept to all four cops on this tiny force.  Everyone else simply sees him as an uppity negro who’s just there to stir up trouble.  And Virgil is quite aware of this. 

Poitier’s performance is a thing of beauty.  Almost his entire performance is in his face, and he portrays an astonishingly wide array of emotions with merely a look – anger, annoyance, indignation – but never fear.  He rarely raises his voice, but speaks calmly and smoothly, and always with the utmost confidence.  Steiger, on the other hand, is the exact opposite.  He is loud, crude, and almost always on the defensive.  No one, especially not a black man, is going to tell him how to run his department!  Esepecially if it means admitting he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Not a lot of films from this era hold up well, but this one does.  Even if the look of small Southern towns have changed (and most haven’t), it still works as a slice of life from a bygone era.  But the fact that there are still those who hold onto their prejudices even to this day means that sadly, the film is just as timely as ever.