Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. In the Heat of the Night is the fortieth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. **The Sound of Music will be reviewed out of order so we can see it in theaters Across the history of the Oscars, there is no shortage of stories about racial reconciliation. As recently as 2018 even, stories about unlikely friends and the thawing of bitter hearts have won Hollywood’s biggest prize. More often than not these stories are tone deaf and idealistic, lifting up the easement of white guilt rather than highlighting the perspective of any minority group. Universally they’ve been directed by white men. The very best of the bunch is also one of the earliest, landing right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night stands out among this bunch of films precisely because it refuses to meet its bigots halfway. Virgil Tibbs (an inspired Sidney Portier) is a Philadelphia detective on his way back from visiting his mother in the deep south. Waiting at the station he’s picked up on suspicion of murdering a local industrialist. The racist cops, led by chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger, magnificently prickly), are ready to lock him up before discovering his profession. Instead, as Tibbs is getting ready to leave, his chief back in Pennsylvania suggests he stay and help solve the murder. Now unlikely and distrustful allies, Tibbs and Gillespie set off on an odyssey to find a killer that will challenge both of their preconceptions. In the Heat of the Night is first and foremost a gloriously sweat drenched noir. A tightly woven murder mystery awaits the pair of investigators with all the commensurate twist and turns one would expect from a top tier neo-noir. Porter’s Tibbs is a different kind of gumshoe than you might see in an old Bogart picture, cool and collected on the surface but boiling in emotion underneath. Beyond any of the smartly laced commentary on race, its just an impressively paced police procedural. When the film works best, it’s highlighting exactly how little this tale of mismatched heroes is actually interested in finding common ground. Jewison’s direction and Stirling Silliphant’s script make explicit that there is no middle ground between racists and the targets of their bigotry. Every inch of movement between the two in this film comes from Gillespie as he gets to know Tibbs. In the standout scene of the film Tibbs lashes back at the outburst of a vilely racist suspect. This is a film that does not try to hold back or glamorize the bigots that hurl slurs, insults and worse and Tibbs throughout the course of the plot. Even as Gillespie softens to his new partner, he is not applauded for doing so. Tibbs continues to work diligently and stand firm against the hatred — and frequently violence — thrown at him. He changes very few minds but does not give an inch to those that try to force him out of town. Gorgeously shot, cinematographer Haskell Wexler made special effort in lighting the scenes with Portier’s complexion in consideration, a first for a Hollywood production. The whole film looks incredible and really dramatizes the emotions of the leads as they track down the killer. It is one of the best looking films of the era. What movies like Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy — both Best Picture winners in later eras — misunderstand is that the insidiousness of racism cannot be snuffed out by congeniality and friendship. Maybe Gillespie softens his edges after seeing Tibbs work but the small Mississippi town he presides over never stops trying to lynch the detective from up north. Competent as he is, Tibbs cannot eradicate bigotry through competency alone. Jewison’s film never tries to say that he can, rather portraying the racists for what they are: vile, useless and moronic. 10/10
Comments
|