In the Heat of the Night

The 1967 Academy Awards is widely considered one of the turning points and a viable symbol of the movie industry in full-blown identity crisis. Even the Wikipedia page for the event states: “The Best Picture nominees were an eclectic group of films reflecting the chaos of the era.” You had the white elephant social message movie (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), the requisite musical (Doctor Dolittle), and two daring, ambitious classics-in-the-making that reflected the upcoming voices and faces of the New Hollywood (Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate). Situated in-between them was the mutant film that featured all the outward appearances of classic studio making but spoke its themes with more truth and honesty (In the Heat of the Night).

The eventual winner was the film that situated itself between the old and the new. What does that mean for coming to In the Heat of the Night through modern eyes? Well, it holds up surprisingly well as a study of two different personalities learning to deal with each other while investigating a crime. It offers Sidney Poitier one of the richest roles of his career and provides a series of great character actors the opportunity to shine.

Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), a Philadelphia police detective specializing in homicides, get picked-up as a suspect for the murder of a wealthy resident of a small southern town. Watching Tibbs comply with the prejudicial cops is nerve-wracking knowing that if he does the smallest incorrect choice it’ll end badly for him. His compliance masks a barely concealed rage until his eventual identity is revealed and he goes about demanding equitable treatment and respect from the white officers who wrongly picked him up.

Every actor has a year where they go full supernova, and 1967 was that year for Poitier. To Sir, With Love and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner were well liked and big moneymakers for their studios, yet his best work that year was in this movie where he was allowed to be a man and not a symbol. Not only does he exhibit grace under pressure but an assertiveness that shakes off the marble statue he was becoming and reveals the flesh underneath.

He's also dynamite with Rod Steiger as Gillespie, the casually racist chief of police in the small town of Sparta, Mississippi. But Steiger more than holds his own against Poitier’s career-defining work. The bulk of the film is about the two career lawmen learning to rely on each other to solve the crime while slowly unpacking their cultural baggage. Steiger’s drunken explication of “Now, don’t you get smart with me, boy” to Poitier is loaded with the nation’s racial history and it comes off a moment of alleged bonding and understanding.

In the Heat of the Night does not offer soothing balm for the country’s tense relations between the races, it is far too pragmatic and smart for that. The ending goodbye at the train station tries to be a portent of hope but coming so soon after the drunken outburst, it positions that Steiger’s chief of police will revert to his old racist ways soon after the train pulls away. People don’t change as cleanly or easily as they do in the movies. They’re more likely to single out one person as the exception, a symbol of the race, that functions as a cudgel to bash the rest. That is the emotional undercurrent of not only the scene, but much of their interactions.

While the murder-mystery is merely window dressing for an exploration of social issues, In the Heat of the Night retains a curious power. Not quite New Hollywood, not quite a studio system product, but an intelligent, nuanced take on the social problem movie. In the Heat of the Night deserved that Oscar. One of the few times when the Academy awarded a movie about racism that isn’t goopy white savior hokum.