In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Directed by Norman Jewison

Film Review

Watching In the Heat of the Night today it is hard to imagine the impact it had when it was first released in the summer of 1967.  One of the few films of the decade to confront the issue of racial intolerance in the United States head-on, it was a sensation, providing a well-timed boost to the Civil Rights Movement by delivering the most effective condemnation of racial prejudice, of the kind that was still endemic in the Deep South (and would remain so for many years).  Based on John Ball's 1965 novel of the same title, In the Heat of the Night is not only an important piece of social commentary, it is also an engrossing police procedural drama that is directed with flair by Norman Jewison and rendered compelling by its two lead actors, Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, who both turn in a performance of exceptional quality.

Almost a decade earlier, Poitier had starred in another racially themed film, Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958), the film that made him an overnight star.  Whilst In the Heat of the Night is not quite so groundbreaking, and suffers a little from being a genre film rather than a realist drama, it has its moments of daring.  Most controversial is the scene in which Poitier's character slaps a suspected murderer (and likely white supremacist) when he hits him.  At the time, the idea that a black person would hit back when struck by a white man was almost inconceivable.  When Steiger asks Poitier what he is called in his home town of Philadelphia, Poitier responds with what has become one of the most famous lines in movie lore: "They call me MISTER Tibbs!"   From the outset, the audience is conditioned to identify with Poitier, a model of American decency compared with Steiger's gum-chewing slob of a southern sheriff, and the film's message soon becomes abundantly clear: to get things done, all members of a racially diverse society have no choice but to work together.

What makes the film so daring, and so interesting, is that both of the main protagonists - the white cop Gillespie and his black counterpart Tibbs - are afflicted with deep-seated prejudices that inhibit their ability to work effectively.  It is only by overcoming their mutual dislike that these two very different individuals are able to resolve the matter in hand and emerge with some dignity.  Whilst their characters are outwardly very different, Poitier and Steiger show us, very subtly, that they share the same flaws, the same instinctive mistrust for others that are not of their kind, and must undergo a similar inner transformation if they are to achieve their full potential, as police officers and human beings.

Provocative the film may have been, but this did not prevent it from being a critical and commercial success.  It even spawned two (admittedly inferior) sequels, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971), with Poitier reprising his most famous screen role, the driven police homicide officer Virgil Tibbs.  The film was nominated for seven awards at the 1968 Oscars, winning five awards in categories that included Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor (Rod Steiger).  With Poitier going on to triumph in another racially themed hit, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, it must have appeared, as 1967 drew to a close, that the African-American Civil Rights Movement was beginning to win the war against racial prejudice in America.  Who would imagine that, just a few month later, the movement's leader, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. would be assassinated?   It would be many more years yet before the sentiment that is so powerfully expressed in those final scenes of In the Heat of the Night, where a white man and a black man are able to show mutual respect for one another, and mean it, would become commonplace in America.  If the film now appears a little dated, this can only be a good thing.

Film Synopsis

Sparta, Mississippi.  Late one evening, police officer Sam Wood finds a dead body in the street.  The murder victim is Mr Colbert, a prominent businessman who was about to open a factory which would provide jobs that are badly needed in the town.  Realising what is at stake, local police chief Bill Gillespie hastily sets out to find Colbert's killer, and has a ready suspect in a black man who was found waiting at a train station a few hours after the murder.  Gillespie is not pleased to learn that his convenient scapegoat is himself a police officer, Virgil Tibbs, a homicide expert from Philadelpia.  Under pressure from the dead man's widow, Gillespie is forced to enlist Tibbs' help in finding the murderer.  When local hostility to Tibbs' presence becomes apparent, he has a change of heart and urges Tibbs to return to his home state.  Undeterred by the barrage of racial intolerance that comes his way, Tibbs sticks to the case, determined to see it through to the bitter end, with or without Gillespie's help...