Like everyone else, I’ve been avidly listening to all the election-year hubbub. No matter what your political affliation, it is heady to realize you are witnessing an historical event: the presidential campaign of the first African-American candidate for a major political party. Neat stuff, especially when you realize that it was only 40 or so years ago that it was common to see film clips of civil rights protestors flattened by firehoses on the nightly news.
Over the weekend, I watched "In the Heat of the Night" again (gotta love Turner Classic Movies). I hadn’t seen it in a while, and I’d forgotten what a terrific film it is. Released in 1967, the story is complex and compelling beneath its deceptively simple plot: murder in a small town. Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is passing through Sparta, Mississippi, when he is accused of the killing of a local businessman. Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) doesn’t know what to make of this man, especially after he finds out that, not only is he a detective, he is a forensic science expert (we’d call him a CSI now). Once it’s been established that Tibbs is not the murderer, Gillespie, who above all is a cop, realizes he is in over his head and needs Tibbs to help him solve the murder. (A footnote – the producers decided against filming in the actual town of Sparta, Mississippi; it was judged to be too dangerous. Instead, the movie was shot in Sparta, Illinois.)
There isn’t a misplaced step in this entire film. The director, Norman Jewison, resisted the temptation to turn all the Mississippi characters into ignorant yahoos and Tibbs into a noble, flawless defender of justice. Even the most minor characters are layered and complicated. Take for example, Harvey Oberst (played by the fabulous and underappreciated Scott Wilson), who is accused of the murder after Tibbs is cleared. Tibbs knows Oberst isn’t guilty, either; Oberst starts out railing against the indignity of having a black man in the cell with him, but then, after he realizes Tibbs is, as Poitier puts, "all you’ve got," he grudgingly answers his questions, and later, goes out of his way to help him. Even in this character, there is change and development. And every part, no matter how small, is cast with a superb actor — a lot of them whose names you might not know, but whose faces are familiar.
In the scene below, Tibbs and Gillespie visit the local bigwig, Eric Endicott (played by Larry Gates), whom Tibbs suspects is the murderer. (Another note – the butler is played by Jester Hairston, who, among his many other achievements in acting and music, played Tom Robinson’s father Spence in "To Kill a Mockingbird.") Steiger’s Gillespie in this scene is a marvel: caught in the conflict of his conscience and his environment and upbringing. The scene not only shows what violence lurks beneath the thin veneer of culture; it show how Tibbs ("like the rest of us," Steiger says) is capable of letting his emotions get in the way of the investigation. That "like the rest of us" is key to the whole movie. It is when Steiger’s character really gets it — that Tibbs is indeed just like him: impassioned and flawed, but wanting to get it right. And Tibbs suddenly gets it, too – that he and Gillespie are more alike than they are different.