The Heat of the Night

This 1967 movie starring Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier tells the story of a murder in a small Mississippi town called Sparta. Poitier playing a Philadelphia police detective visiting his mother is caught up in the investigation by no choice of his own and then refuses to leave until he has solved the case.

Rod Steiger won the Oscar for Best Actor and deservedly so. His portrayal of the small town sheriff who still harbors many racist feelings having to deal with an African American detective who clearly knows more than him in how to deal with a murder.

Twice in the movie Chief Gillespie locks up the wrong man based on circumstantial evidence. As an aside here we should all sleep less soundly knowing that this sort of police work is still done in a great many cases. Often the evidence is tailored to fit the suspect.

The movie is a study in race and the Deep South. Racism permeates everything. White folks do not want to talk in front of black folks, serve them in their restaraunts or offer them any other courtesies they take advantage of.

In the end the murder is solved. We hear Poitier tell the Chief when asked what they call him in Philadelphia " They call me MR Tibbs." which has become an iconic statement.

The last line in the movie is the Chief telling Virgil " To take care you hear" is a classic understatement of an acknowledgement of a change in their relationship.

This is a great movie.

The Defiant Ones

Continuing my movies from the fifties week, TCM is a great channel, I watched this the other night. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier play two convicts that escape after a car accident takes their transport vehicle off the road. They are chained together and being black and white in fifties Mississippi are not enamored of each other.

Curtis is wonderful in his role, much better to me than his celebrated performance in Some Like it Hot and Poitier is telling and sharp in his role as well.

Shot in black and white but very effectively this is a very good movie. Lon Chaney has a small role that for his few moments fills the screen.

Talking to my wife about the movie I commented that remade today it would be all bloody violence and with streams of profanity. I am not a prude but this movie had no profanity and felt no less realistic to me.

A very good movie.

Guess Whose Coming to Dinner

This classic movie from 1967 seems in many ways dated. However one can appreciate easily how controversial the movie was then. When we think about the conversations that parents have today, perhaps their children are coming out to them, or they are bringing home a partner of a different race.

These questions still bring distress to most parents.

In the movie Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, and Katherine Hepburn star. Tracy and Hepburn as the parents of a young woman who brings home a black gentleman who she is love with and plans to marry.

Her parents are staunch liberals so face a true test of what they have preached in terms of equality.

Of course in this movie Poitier plays a Dr who is a very accomplished individual. This is much different than what many parents might face today. Still the message was delivered and the movie is good.

Perhaps the best parts are the Priest who is a family friend and has a good sense of humor and ethics about the whole thing and Isabel Sanford as the black maid who disagrees with the whole idea of an interracial relationship.

A good movie, perhaps a little dated. Still worth watching and Tracy and Hepburn were wonderful.