In the Heat of the Night

Sidney Poitier has a reputation in his earlier work for being the poster child for racial tensions. He was a key part of the cast for The Defiant Ones; the face of interracial marriage in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; the black school teacher in a predominantly white neighborhood in To Sir, With Love; and the smart and distinguished homicide detective from Philadelphia who finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi, in In the Heat of the Night. While not all of his films dealt with racism or the civil rights movement, enough did that he was looked at as a major proponent for the shift in views towards equality among the races. Sidney Poitier became one of those actors that, while never losing track of his heritage and race, always had a dignity to him that wasn’t commonly depicted in Hollywood in the 1960s. It was a refreshing look at a race of people in a better light than what had been depicted for far too long in the pictures. 

A downside to this is, like in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, his character in In the Heat of the Night has to practically be perfect to challenge people’s perceptions of him. After all,  if he is outstanding in every other way, the only thing you could hold against him is his race, thus challenging views held by many at the time. In the former movie, he is a world-renowned doctor, and here he is the best homicide detective in Philadelphia, able to out-think everyone in a small Mississippi town just by a cursory look at the murder victim, besting even the town coroner. The Mississippi officers are all white and are quick to throw blame around with little to no evidence. But, as good as Poitier’s character, Virgil Tibbs, is, he is not perfect. He’s cocky, egotistical, and has a quick temper that occasionally puts him unnecessarily in hot water. He does see himself as better than the white officers here, too. His arrogance puts him in positions that often jeopardize his safety.

In the Heat of the Night, may be a racial equality story, but it is also a murder mystery. Before we see one frame of Sidney Poitier, we have the murder. The victim is wealthy industrialist Phillip Colbert, who is in Sparta, Mississippi, to oversee the building of a new factory. This factory will provide jobs for hundreds of white and black people living in the area, something that apparently has sparked some heated emotions amongst the locals. Late one night, police officer Sam Wood (Warren Oats) discovers Colbert’s murdered body lying in the street. He calls it in and is sent out to bring in any suspects. What he finds is Virgil Tibbs, a black man in a nice suit, sitting on a bench at a nearby railroad station waiting for a train. Woods arrests Tibbs for no other reason other than him being black and brings him into the station. 

At the station, Tibbs is interrogated by the local Police Chief, Gillespie (Rod Steiger), who is enraged when Tibbs produces a badge proving he is also an officer of the law. One quick call up to Philadelphia to talk to Tibbs’ supervisor proves that they have the wrong man. But Tibbs is pressed into service by his boss to assist Gillespie in their case since he happens to be one of the best homicide detectives in the city. Reluctantly, he agrees to examine the body, discovering, almost immediately, things that the local law have overlooked. This proves invaluable when, shortly afterwards, the cops bring in yet another person accused of the murder. The case gets more complicated the more that is uncovered; meanwhile, Tibbs is being harassed by some locals who don’t take too kindly to a black man getting involved in their business. The same goes for Gillespie, who finds himself at odds with his personal feelings and those around him in regard to Tibbs. Certain things would have definitely played out differently a few years before, but times have changed, not all of it as much as it should have.  

While the film is set in Mississippi, for unfortunate reasons, it had to be filmed elsewhere. The actual filming location was Sparta, Illinois. This was to protect Sidney Poitier, who was under threat of violence should he actually be filming in the Deep South. Even so, there were threats made to him, and he felt the need to have a gun with him in his hotel room in case of an attack. The 1960s were not that long ago, but in some ways, it feels otherwise. Having lived for a time in the state of Mississippi, I saw that, while racism wasn’t nearly as bad as it is depicted in this film, it was a lot worse than anything I saw in the North. Old wounds heal slowly. Sidney Poitier was amongst the faces of those that represented change, and, for some people, that was a thing to fight against. 

It is these racial politics that are the primary reason this film is as well regarded as it is. For comparison, Sidney Poitier starred in two sequels, relocating Virgil Tibbs to San Francisco. Neither of those films portrayed the racial division card but had mysteries that were roughly on par with the first film. In both cases, those sequels are bland and uninteresting movies, nothing more than generic police dramas. Poitier is good in them, but he can’t help keep either of those films afloat. There needed to be that tension we had between Tibbs, Gillespie, and the rest of the police, and without that, this is would be nothing more than an average whodunit. 

Virtually every white person in the town of Sparta, Mississippi is depicted as racist on one level or another, with the exception of one white man who plays a key role in the resolution near the end of the film. The only reason Tibbs is kept on the case is because of the wife of the murder victim. When Tibbs first meets her, she jerks away violently whenever he even moves in her general direction. It matters not that he is well-dressed and groomed and in a police station. It’s only when she sees he is the only man making a real attempt to find the actual murderer that she insists he stays on the case, threatening to pull out her husband’s plans to build the factory if they don’t keep him on. This gets the mayor involved. The mayor sees this as a win-win situation as she will keep the factory construction going so long as Tibbs helps, whether it gets Tibbs killed or not. 

Gillespie is a more complex character, harder to pin down than the others. He starts out just as eager to pin the blame for the murder on the first black man brought in, evidence or no. When Tibbs is determined to leave this town and return to his home in the north, Gillespie is forced to try and coax him back into the investigation. He’s a shrewd man with some keen observations, and he uses those to play up Tibbs’ ego. They have a conversation at the train station where Gillespie calls him out:

“Just once in my life, I'm gonna own my temper. I'm telling you that you're gonna stay here. You're gonna stay here if I have to go inside and call your chief of police and have him remind you of what he told you to do. But I don't think I have to do that, you see? No, because you're so damn smart. You're smarter than any white man. You're just gonna stay here and show us all. You've got such a big head that you could never live with yourself unless you could put us all to shame. You wanna know something, Virgil? I don't think that you could let an opportunity like that pass by.” 

Does Gillespie really believe Tibbs is smarter than all of them, or is he playing up to that ego because he knows he can provoke him into staying? Gillespie is not stupid, even if he can be a bit narrow-minded at times. He is showing in this scene one of the reasons he is the one who was given the Chief of Police position rather than someone else. He’s also slowly growing to respect Tibbs just a little, even if it is mostly subconscious. This becomes a factor when, while they are questioning Eric Endicott (Larry Gates), the chief competitor of Phillip Colbert. After several unveiled remarks about black people, Endicott slaps Tibbs, and Tibbs slaps him right back. Gillespie doesn’t know how to respond to that. There was a time when Tibbs would have been hung for such an offense, as Endicott points out. The mayor will later state outright that Gillespie’s predecessor would not have hesitated about shooting Tibbs outright and claiming self-defense. 

In the end, the answers to the murder mystery are revealed, and they don’t amount to much of anything. As I mentioned before, this isn’t really a movie about the mystery but about the setting and the sentiments of the time. It is here to point out the stupidity of racism and to make those who base their opinions strictly on physical appearance look ridiculous. It does that well, and that is the primary reason this film won the Best Picture Oscar in 1967. It is not a better film than some of the other nominees, specifically Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, nor one of the best films of the year that didn’t even get nominated, Cool Hand Luke. But it is still a fantastic film for depicting the way things were at a time when those things needed to be shown to the world. Sidney Poitier was good at making these kinds of movies. I saw this one yesterday in a theater with a large audience, and they laughed at the right moments and were moved at times, too. This film still holds up on that level. While the racial politics aren’t this harsh anymore, they still are strongly felt, and emotions still run hot at times. Take that away from this, and you don’t have an interesting movie anymore. All you have to do is watch the sequels to realize that. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Walter Mirisch (won)

Best Director: Norman Jewison

Best Actor: Rod Steiger (won)

Best Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium: Stirling Silliphant (won)

Best Film Editing: Hal Ashby (won)

Best Sound: Samuel Goldwyn Studio Sound Department (won)

Best Sound Effects: James Richard 

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Release Date: August 2, 1967

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oats, and Lee Grant

Directed By: Norman Jewison