In the Heat of the Night (1967)
In one of Sidney Poitier’s most famous films, he plays a police detective drawn into a murder investigation in the deep South. Everyone in the small Mississippi town is pretty racist, including the local police chief Rod Steiger. They constantly belittle Sidney and call him “boy” until he can’t take it anymore. “They call me Mister Tibbs!” is his famous line, one so iconic that the sequel to the film was given that title.
While Sidney wasn’t nominated for an Oscar that year, ignored for both this film and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Rod Steiger won for Best Actor. It was a make-up Oscar for his loss of 1965’s The Pawnbroker to Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. Ironically, both Lee and Rod were arguably the supporting characters in the films that won them Best Actor.
While In the Heat of the Night is a classic, I struggle to understand why. The direction seems haphazard, with random zooms or pans that take you out of the story. The script is laughably weak, giving neither lead any character development to work with. In the one scene where they sit together in Rod’s house and talk about their lives, there’s very little that they actually say. Rod Steiger is a very good actor, but this movie manages to fool everyone. His gum-chewing (that director Norman Jewison insisted on) is irritating and stereotypical, and he walks through his part as if it was a continuation of Jud from Oklahoma! The end result looks like a 1970s television movie, but if you’ve never seen it, you can add it to your list.
Want to watch it? Click here to watch it on ok.ru. And thanks "ASA Movie Craze" for posting!
More Sidney Poitier movies here!
While Sidney wasn’t nominated for an Oscar that year, ignored for both this film and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Rod Steiger won for Best Actor. It was a make-up Oscar for his loss of 1965’s The Pawnbroker to Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. Ironically, both Lee and Rod were arguably the supporting characters in the films that won them Best Actor.
While In the Heat of the Night is a classic, I struggle to understand why. The direction seems haphazard, with random zooms or pans that take you out of the story. The script is laughably weak, giving neither lead any character development to work with. In the one scene where they sit together in Rod’s house and talk about their lives, there’s very little that they actually say. Rod Steiger is a very good actor, but this movie manages to fool everyone. His gum-chewing (that director Norman Jewison insisted on) is irritating and stereotypical, and he walks through his part as if it was a continuation of Jud from Oklahoma! The end result looks like a 1970s television movie, but if you’ve never seen it, you can add it to your list.
Want to watch it? Click here to watch it on ok.ru. And thanks "ASA Movie Craze" for posting!
More Sidney Poitier movies here!