Was this really the best movie of 1967? Honestly? It won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actor, and I really don't understand that. It's not a bad film, it's just not particularly brilliant either. Other than the shocking (at the time) portrayal of an intelligent, educated black man showing up racists in a small Southern town there's not a lot else going for it. The script is slow and cumbersome, and the mystery anything but exciting. On top of this the climactic scene is appalling and ruins everything that went before. Characters flit in and out without much explanation, and the whole thing reeks of stereotyping (though, of course, it may not have been so much at the time). Other than a decent performance by Rod Steiger, and the grudging respect he eventually shows Poitier's Tibbs, there is little here to recommend.
The plot starts off well enough. A lazy, small-town cop goes about his daily night rounds only to suddenly discover the body of the town's wealthiest man, a newcomer who hoped to build a large factory and employ hundreds of locals. Pressure is placed upon Police Chief Gillespie (Steiger) to solve the crime, and the lazy cop immediately arrests the first black man he sees, Virgil Tibbs. Unfortunately Tibbs is a respected Homicide Detective from Philadelphia, who upon being released is sheepishly asked for help by Gillespie, who knows he is in over his head. Together they attempt to solve the murder, fighting off local goons and going up against the town's strongman, Eric Endicott (Larry Gates).
Now that sounds interesting, it really does. Sadly the reality is somewhat different, with the movie dragging on and slowly eliminating just about every person in town till they come to the least likely suspect. The murder itself often takes second-place to the relationship between Gillespie and Tibbs, and while I would ordinarily have no problem with this it seems anachronistic and stilted by todays standards. Jewison's direction is also circumspect. With large tracts of the film taking place at night his lighting is poor, leaving the viewer baffled as to what is going on. His framing of the secondary characters is also disappointing as they essentially act out of base motives and nothing more. Maybe I'm just missing something here, but In the Heat of the Night is not the classic it was made out to be. |
