Oscars Retrospective: In the Heat of the Night (40th Academy Awards Review)

In the Heat of the Night~Ray Charles

        This one is going to be a real treat to write about. In the Heat of the Night is that rare old movie, let alone Academy Award-winning one, that exists at the perfect nexus of being any movie critic’s ability to gush about. It started a whole new movie genre, it pioneered some new cinema techniques, it was very historically relevant at the time, it undermines multiple clichés, it has unique protagonists and, above all, it’s still a pretty great movie to boot.

        In the Heat of the Night takes place in the rural hamlet of Sparta, Mississippi. A rich industrialist named Phillip Colbert (Jack Teter), who is building a factory on the outskirts of town, has been found murdered in the street. This being rural Mississippi, police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) and his department try to pin the murder on the first black person they find, a man named Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier). During the course of interrogating Tibbs, they find that not only did he obviously not do it but he’s also, in fact, a police officer who was vacationing from Philadelphia to visit his mother. As if there isn’t enough egg on their face after this, Tibbs accurately diagnoses Colbert’s post-mortem and quickly proves himself to be a far more adept and able homicide detective than Gillespie and his goons. So much so that Colbert’s widow (Lee Grant) demands that Gillespie let Tibbs take over the investigation, or else she’ll withdraw the investment that her husband has been making into the town.
        In the Heat of the Night is arguably the most definitive example of the buddy cop genre, where two police officers with some intense difference (9 times out of 10, it’ll be race though at some point in the 90s, they started doing it with cops and children in such terrible movies as Last Action Hero (1993) and Cop and a Half (1993)) who put aside their differences to solve a crime. Famous examples include 48 Hrs. (1982), the Lethal Weapon series (1987-1998) and the Rush Hour trilogy (1998-2007). And, if we're perfectly being honest, In the Heat of the Night is not the first movie to ever come up with the concept of two radically different protagonists joining forces. There was The Defiant Ones (1956) (which also starred Poitier) where a white man and a black man escape from prison and go on the lam together and, if you want to go way back, there was the Akira Kurosawa film noir, Nora Inu (Eng.: Stray Dog) (1949).
        In the Heat of the Night, along with the Western, For A Few Dollars More (1965) (see part 2 for more details), was the first mainstream American depiction of what we associate as the buddy cop movie though. While For A Few Dollars More was more about the age gap and personality difference, In the Heat of the Night is the movie that introduced and defined the racial mismatch of the genre. Probably the biggest component that In the Heat of the Night introduced, and an underrated aspect of these buddy cop movies, is that these movies probably did more to encourage racial understanding amongst general audiences than many of the sanctimonious dramas that come out. Usually a key part of the buddy cop genre is that the minority member of the duo is portrayed as the more normal and/or competent of the pair which showed that we really aren’t all that different and tells the audience to check their biases as you never know who might be better at defeating some evil criminals. (i.e. In the Lethal Weapon movies, Danny Glover’s Murtaugh is the conservative, middle-class family man while Mel Gibson’s Riggs is the crazy loser who lives in a trailer on the beach.)
        Like all buddy cop movies, the joy of the movie ultimately comes down to the two leads. Officer Virgil Tibbs is far and away Sidney Poitier’s most iconic character and one of the greatest of all movie characters. We’ve discussed previously how Poitier had grown to being typecast over the years as Hollywood’s only token black guy who would appear in films that promoted racial understanding while having just one black character in the cast. In all of these movies, Poitier would play a dignified figure who is clearly angry at his mistreatment but always keeps his temper in check, usually with a chosen eye twitch and a snarl.
        And, in total fairness, if you’re familiar with Poitier’s filmography, Virgil Tibbs isn’t all that much different from his usual performance. It’s more electrifying here though because of the sharp script and because of the fact that Tibbs is a policeman. This is an authority figure who is used to being respected so he can keep communities safe and arrest murderers. The fact that he is treated so disrespectfully by everyone he encounters makes the racism that much more uncomfortable because of how utterly foolish it is to backtalk a cop. It also makes him seem much more badass because, like most cops, he expects his authority to be unchallenged, including by his fellow cops, and will not accept being treated like this, as demonstrated in the film’s most iconic line:

        While Poitier is excellent, he was actually ignored (arguably snubbed) for the Academy Award for Best Leading Actor, while the winner was his co-star, Rod Steiger as Chief Bill Gillespie. While this could be interpreted as a racially insensitive decision, I don’t think it’s an accident as Steiger does have a much more complex and difficult character to pull off. For starters, Steiger went full method and put on a Godawful amount of weight to portray the role, even though he arguably didn’t have to. In the book that the movie was based off of, Gillespie was merely described as a tall man and generally portrayed as a Humphrey Bogart-esque detective you saw in most dimeback novels. In the movie itself, Gillespie seems much more of the archetype of the obese Southern police chief that most viewers of the Civil Rights movement would have become familiar with.
        In addition, Gillespie also runs the full gamut of a pretty likable character arc. Another aspect of this buddy cop genre is the "buddy" part of that word as our two leads eventually come to learn that they’re not all that different and even become friends. It feels especially rewarding here just because of how unlikable Gillespie comes off at the beginning of the movie. The first scene where Gillespie and Tibbs meet each other after Tibbs is detained is some of the most electrifying acting you’ll ever see. Steiger does a great job transitioning from being drunk on his own power to having a real “drop in the stomach” moment once he realizes that Tibbs is a policeman.
        As the story goes on, we see Gillespie slowly come to respect Tibbs on the basis of just how good at his job Tibbs is. It’s great fun watching because, despite how demeaning and borderline abusive Gillespie comes off to his moronic deputies, the audience eventually finds that he’s actually a pretty effective boss and police officer. He knows his own strengths and weaknesses, he doesn’t shirk his responsibilities (even if it would be easy to do so for a man of his setting) and he knows how to push Tibbs’ buttons to make him more efficient at his job. The two bonding over the course of the movie feels very realistic as they’re united by the responsibility they feel for solving the murder though there’s always that unspoken tension as to if Gillespie is bossing Tibbs around because he’s a black man or because he’s a subordinate officer.
        The setting of In the Heat of the Night is another major reason for this movie’s success that cannot be ignored. The very idea of a rural Mississippi town in the 1960s is one of those unspoken settings that says enough. The racial tension in this movie is so thick that it can be cut with a knife and it hangs there constantly. Every other black man that Tibbs meets in the movie is the subject to grinding Jim Crow poverty and most of the white characters are depicted all too realistically. Thus, there’s an extra level of suspense to In the Heat of the Night that still makes it hold up beyond just being a film noir murder-mystery (although the mystery is a good one). In most buddy cop movies, one is sort of the brain and the other is the muscle or the liaison into the underworld. Here, Tibbs fulfills both those roles, thus making Gillespie’s job to be the only thing standing between Tibbs and getting lynched by the townsfolk who don’t like a black man from up north telling them what to do. And Tibbs is the exact type of person who won’t take this type of attitude which just makes Gillespie’s job that much harder.
        This in turn ties into probably the second-most famous scene in the movie. One of the suspects in the film is the town’s other richest inhabitant, Mr. Endicott (Larry Gates). When Tibbs and Gillespie come to his house to interrogate him, this happens:

        To add context on how shocking this scene was, remember the historical context of 1967. Go back to previous blog entries to read about what passed for “racially sensitive” up to this point. The director, Norman Jewison, recounted watching a racially mixed screening in NYC and the white half of the audience gasped in shock while the black half cheered. Even watching this scene so many years later, this scene is excellent because it allows you to re-examine some of your own implicit biases that you may not even be aware of just going by your initial reaction to that slap. The movie does such a great job at building up Endicott and the environment he lords over that it’s still shocking watching Tibbs slap back. Yet, if the world was truly racially blind, that slap shouldn’t be surprising at all. I mean, for Christ’s sake, the dude just smacked a policeman, what did he think was going to happen to him?
        The final key component to In the Heat of the Night’s success is the look of the film. This movie, as well as some of the other movies discussed in part 2, broke ground in the look of them. Kinda. The history of color in film has been discussed in this series in film as movies would experiment with different levels of black-and-white or color (i.e. SepiaTone, changing tones etc.) before making black-and-white the industry standard in the 30s. The first full Technicolor film was Becky Sharp (1937) but it really got its big mainstream push from The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone With the Wind (1939).
        Due to the expense of the Technicolor process, it didn’t fully become ubiquitous until the 1950s. And when movies were colored, the color in question was so saturated that it looked in a way that was clearly not close to how real-life looked. Films that had color were also usually shot on sound stages which added to the artificiality. As a result, it became an unspoken rule that movies in color would be the grander, faker movies such as the epics and the musicals while black-and-white was reserved for the more realistic human dramas. Night scenes in particular looked fake in old Technicolor movies as the process usually couldn’t quite pick up shapes if it was truly nighttime out and, again, Technicolor was usually reserved for movies where night would just look like a dimmed set.
        The night scenes in In the Heat of the Night, by contrast, look like night. A lot of the exterior scenes border on being pitch-black and the reflection of the glistening sweat allows the characters to reflect off of what little light there is, giving the feeling of a muggy summer’s night. This sort of night cinematography would become the industry standard for a long time as many movies of the late 60s, 70s and 80s have this look of truly feeling like they’re shot at night. (Modern movies now have a common problem with night shoots where they feel artificial again though it’s usually because of filmmakers lazily just putting a blue filter over a shot and calling it night.)
        This information I’m getting from Mark Harris’ very excellent book, Pictures at a Revolution (2008), which is a paired making-of story of the 5 Best Picture nominees of 1967, set against the backdrop of the rise of the Hollywood New Wave which discusses many of these processes and is also where I’m getting most of the information for this installment. That having been said, while Mr. Harris lays the feet of this breakthrough in cinematography (which caused black-and-white movies to die out and made color the default of all movies; starting in 1967, the Academy Awards would no longer have separate color and black-and-white categories for Cinematography, Set Design etc.) on In the Heat of the Night, I do question this a bit. I’ve watched a lot of 60s cinema for this blog and there was definitely a change around the turn of the decade in how night scenes looked. The night scenes in Goldfinger (1964) or That Darn Cat! (1965) felt a lot closer to real night than movies like The Ten Commandments (1956), even if they were still shot on sound stages. Though, I also guess In the Heat of the Night is considered much more high cinema than Goldfinger or That Darn Cat! which is why it caused this cinematography style to be respected by cinephiles. (As much as this blog series tries to fight against that mindset, the fact of the matter is that is what the mindset was at the time.)

 

The groundbreaking nighttime cinematography that encouraged a generation of filmmakers to annihilate their Circadian Rhythms for style points. 

        Regardless of who began it, this nighttime cinematography was popularized and made famous by In the Heat of the Night, giving the movie its own distinct identity and making the environment a character in and of itself. The constant heat you feel on both day and night adds to the simmering racial tension that is ever-present throughout. You really feel like you’re right there in rural Mississippi where everyone is talking as slowly and politely as possible whilst trying to keep their tempers in check. Which is equally impressive as this movie wasn’t even shot in Mississippi; it was actually shot in southern Illinois (on-site shooting was discussed but Poitier vetoed that idea as he had taken part in the Freedom Rides earlier in the decade and was understandably not eager to go south of the Mason-Dixon line ever again).
        All this adds together to make one Hell of a contemporary film noir. In the Heat of the Night wasn’t just a great movie as a political statement but it was just a great movie in general. In terms of flaws with the film, there aren’t really any to pick up on. It can be a bit slow-paced but, as mentioned, the acting and writing are so good that you’re completely wrapped up. The only thing I noticed that bothered me is that in the book, Tibbs says that he’s from Pasadena, California while in the movie, he’s from Philadelphia. I guess they changed it to add more of a North-vs-South dynamic though if you know your Philadelphian history, you’ll know that the Philadelphia Police Department in the 60s was run by a very notoriously racist commissioner/future mayor (Frank Rizzo if you want to read more), making it unlikely that Tibbs would be working there or, assuming he wasn’t laid off, be treated by his coworkers as respectfully as he implies.
        Similar to To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), In the Heat of the Night does a great job at getting its thumb to the pulse of where racism in the South comes from. While it’s not excused, almost every racist character in the film is portrayed as ignorant, stupid or unwilling to acknowledge a worldview outside of their small town. This isn’t a good thing but the film is very subtle in how it organically steers us to a man like Gillespie being deceptively open-minded enough to accept that a black man could be his equal. The film never quite spells it out or says it which just makes their final send-off with each other at the end of the movie feel that much more rewarding.
        In the Heat of the Night is a great movie that still holds up. Granted, it can be uncomfortable in its portrayal of racism and usage of the n-word but neither of those are anachronisms or outdated in their portrayal. It also allows a little bit of vicarious living as this mindset is clearly punished but not so much so that the people who espouse it must all die just for believing it. The film still holds up very well years later as a well-paced, well-acted, well-written crime procedural with, again, two great leads giving some of the best performances of their career.
        But did it deserve to be called the movie of the year?

In case you missed it:

1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2

2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2

3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2

4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2

5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2

6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2

7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2

8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2

9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2

10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2

11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2

12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2

13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2

14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2

15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2

16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2

17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2

18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2

19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2

20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2

21st Academy Awards (1948): Hamlet: Part 1, Part 2

22nd Academy Awards (1949): All The King's Men: Part 1, Part 2

23rd Academy Awards (1950): All About Eve: Part 1, Part 2

24th Academy Awards (1951): An American in Paris: Part 1, Part 2

25th Academy Awards (1952): The Greatest Show on Earth: Part 1, Part 2

26th Academy Awards (1953): From Here to Eternity: Part 1, Part 2

27th Academy Awards (1954): On the Waterfront: Part 1, Part 2

28th Academy Awards (1955): Marty: Part 1, Part 2

29th Academy Awards (1956): Around the World in 80 Days: Part 1, Part 2

30th Academy Awards (1957): The Bridge on the River Kwai: Part 1, Part 2

31st Academy Awards (1958): Gigi: Part 1, Part 2

32nd Academy Awards (1959): Ben-Hur: Part 1, Part 2

33rd Academy Awards (1960): The Apartment: Part 1, Part 2

34th Academy Awards (1961): West Side Story: Part 1, Part 2

35th Academy Awards (1962): Lawrence of Arabia: Part 1, Part 2 

36th Academy Awards (1963): Tom Jones: Part 1, Part 2 

37th Academy Awards (1964): My Fair Lady: Part 1, Part 2 

38th Academy Awards (1965): The Sound of Music: Part 1, Part 2 

39th Academy Awards (1966): A Man for All Seasons: Part 1, Part 2