What a wonderful film In the Heat of the Night is. This is a film that has a lot of great things going on in it, from a very strong, layered story with socially significant theme to a very strong cast with actors who are at the top of their respective games playing roles that the audience cares about. This is at once a very riveting detective story as well as a story about overcoming prejudices and preconceived notions. It isn’t a perfect film, but it comes very close to being one.
Along with having one of cinema’s most iconic moments in this film (“They call me Mr. Tibbs!”), Sidney Poitier cemented himself as one of the great actors of the up and coming generation that had been making its mark over the previous decade. He played Virgil Tibbs, an African-American police officer from Philadelphia traveling through the south who is at first wrongly accused of killing a local prominent business man, and then later is asked to help and solve the crime. This was a very important film for a number of reasons. First, it was made at a time where the south was just coming out of the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Act had been passed only three years earlier, and racial tensions in the south remained very high.
With that in mind, In the Heat of the Night was certainly one of the most important films of the year since it was dealing with these types of issues. Ironically another film that came out the same year starring Sidney Poitier would deal with these issues as well, but from a slightly lighter and cheerier place. It would be nominated for Best Picture as well, so we’ll discuss it a little later.
As mentioned, this was an important film, especially for its time, but it wouldn’t be regarded as such if it hadn’t have been a good film. Any film can be self-righteous, and certainly plenty have been, however in order for a film to be important it has to stand the test of time and be able to get its message out there. No one will care about a self-righteous film, even if it has a message as important as this film, if it’s not good enough to spend two hours watching. In the Heat of the Night is a film that is worth watching, and in watching it, you get to experience its message, its themes and its conscious through the excellent acting, directing and writing.
As mentioned above, the bare bones of the story reveal this to be a detective story. The twist is that the person who ends up solving it is initially charged with it. Actually, he’s never charged, but Officer Sam Wood (Warren Oats) and Police Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) are both ready to convict him after Wood discovers him sitting alone in the train station after discovering the dead body in the middle of town. Only after Tibbs reveals himself as a police officer and shows Gillespie his badge, is he removed from the list of suspects. At that point an uneasy alliance is created between Tibbs and Gillespie. Tibbs is ordered by his superiors in Philadelphia to assist in solving the crime since he’s one of their best murder detectives and Gillespie, a small town sheriff, has very little experience with this sort of crime.
Some of the best character work in this film is done with Gillespie. He comes across as racist at first, but then doesn’t care at all about Tibbs’ race. He only cares if Tibbs can help him solve the crime. With that, he directs others in the town that are, shall we say uncomfortable, with Tibbs’ presence to work with him. However, Gillespie is never 100% on board with Tibbs helping out, especially when Tibbs uses some of his northern, big city practices to question people. He also is uncomfortable with Tibbs confrontational nature. However Tibbs knows that he has to be this way because deep down he wants to prove to these white supremacists that he is just as good a cop, if not better, and he’s just as smart, if not smarter than they are.
Overall there are very few weaknesses in In the Heat of the Night. One thing I probably would have liked to have seen would have been a more depth of character in Tibbs. He’s a character without flaws, and those types of characters always bug me because one of the purposes of the story is to allow the main character to grow or to learn in some way. Gillespie certainly has opportunities for character growth, and he ends the story less ignorant, less racist and more understanding of the world around him. Tibbs is able to show the other characters in the film that he’s worth just as much as a human being as they are, and he looks to get some satisfaction out of that, but I don’t know if he learned anything or became a better person because of it.
Otherwise it’s terrific. I mentioned earlier that the story is layered, and it is. On the surface it’s a detective story, but the thematic elements of overcoming racial prejudices take leading roles in the story and are not subtle, like thematic elements usually are in films. Usually when a film’s theme is so overt, it feels preachy, however In the Heat of the Night director Norman Jewison and screenwriter Sterling Silliphant took John Ball’s novel and were able to sidestep that landmine by expertly building drama in the story and by making the challenges to overcoming the racism the same as the challenges to solving the case. Tibbs couldn’t overcome one challenge without overcoming the other, so there was a legitimate dramatic purpose to the racism themes. That allowed them to be up front without the story coming off as overly preachy.
As great as the film itself is, I think it’s important to discuss a broader topic. I believe that this film and this year marked a turning point in Hollywood. There were a lot of incredible films that were released in 1967, and many of them were starting to use motifs that hadn’t been used before and were pushing the boundaries of what we could and couldn’t see. Even though they were brief, The Graduate had scenes with nudity. Films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Dirty Dozen were showing violence in a much more graphic way than had been shown to that point. Profanity was starting to be used in dialogue. Cool Hand Luke had one scene that was overtly sexual as the men on the chain gang watched lustily from a distance and a beautiful young girl washed her car. They weren’t afraid to use the N-word in In the Heat of the Night. Also advances in film making techniques like lighting and hand held cameras and sound recording devices were taking the sets out of the sound stages and into the real worlds in which these stories were taking place on a level like never before. I would contend that 1967 marked the beginning of modern film making as we would know it for the next 30-35 years.
Another thing to consider is the actors that were starring in these films. Actors like Sidney Poitier, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, Robert Blake, and John Forstythe all starred in films in 1967 and went on to dominate in film and television for the ensuing two decades. In fact, there are moments in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner where you can practically see the torch getting passed from Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy to Sidney Poitier.
I say all of this knowing full well that a musical won again the following year. However, that would be more of a last gasp than regaining dominance. As we’ll see, starting again in 1969 and continuing throughout the seventies, the great films of the era would be much closer to In the Heat of the Night and The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde than they would be to Doctor Doolittle and The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady.
Did the Academy get it right?
Oof. Boy, am I glad I didn’t have to vote in 1967. When films like Cool Hand Luke and In Cold Blood can’t even get nominated, you know you’re in a tough year. In fact, I would include 1967 with 1939 as two of the greatest years of all time in terms of which films were nominated. Bonnie and Clyde is a great crime movie, and its influence has remained strong since its release. Just see Natural Born Killers to see how Bonnie and Clyde influenced great film makers like Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino some 30 years after it came out. Doctor Doolittle was a musical that was the one nominated film this year that looked backwards instead of forwards. It’s a great production and Rex Harrison is as great in it as he is in My Fair Lady, but as the other nominees show, society and film making were moving away from big studio productions and becoming grittier and more realistic. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner also starred Sidney Poitier, along with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, the latter passing away just weeks after shooting and before the film was released. As mentioned above, it deals with a lot of the same themes as In the Heat of the Night, but it does it in a more light-hearted, but no less serious way. Sidney Poitier falls in love with the daughter of Hepburn and Tracy, forcing them to reexamine their own progressive views against what they feel would be best for their daughter. It’s a truly amazing film and the scene where Poitier confronts his father over his feelings is one of my favorite scenes of all time. Finally, there is The Graduate. Ranked as the #17 film of all time on AFI’s most recent list of the 100 greatest movies of all time (Bonnie and Clyde was ranked #42, In the Heat of the Night was ranked #75, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was ranked #99 on the original list), The Graduate is regarded as one of the seminal films of all time. It’s a story about a man who has an affair with the middle aged wife of his father’s business partner, but then falls in love with her daughter. It’s funny, dramatic, and launched Dustin Hoffman’s career. These are all great films, and I wouldn’t criticize anyone for voting for any of them. With its powerful themes that were very fitting for the time, it’s easy to see why In the Heat of the Night took home the Oscar, and it’s completely appropriate that it would win. I loved the film, but personally would have had to flip a coin to choose whether to vote for The Graduate or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, as those were my two favorite films of the year and I couldn’t choose between them myself. Then depending on the coin toss, I might have had to go two out of three.