“A SLAP HEARD AROUND THE WORLD”

By Raymond Benson

The year 1967 was a milestone for actor Sidney Poitier. First, To Sir, with Love garnered sizable box-office for this British picture, and then Hollywood produced In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, two back-to-back revolutionary movies that solidified Poitier’s position not only as Tinsel Town’s only black leading man at the time, but also as an icon of the civil rights movement and the representative—certainly not by choice—of his race in films to the rest of America. Throughout his career, Poitier maintained an intelligence and dignity that was tangible, and this is what made him such a charismatic star.

Both In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner were Oscar nominees for Best Picture. A winner of five awards, Heat took home the gold. Rod Steiger, Poitier’s dynamic co-star, won the Best Actor trophy. Hal Ashby and Stirling Silliphant were honored for, respectively, editing and the adapted screenplay (based on the novel by John Ball). It was a year of tough competition (The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde were also nominated).

While In the Heat of the Night is still a terrific movie today, one must place it in the context of the year it was released to fully understand its impact. The civil rights movement was at its height. The nation’s television sets were full of images of marches, riots, and violence. It seemed as if we were sitting on a powder keg, and Heat perfectly captured the tension of the moment by telling a story set in the South of a racist police chief and a black detective who unwittingly join forces to solve a murder.

Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) is a homicide detective from Philadelphia who happens to be passing through town on the night a prominent white businessman is found murdered. Arrested at the train station, Tibbs is brought to Chief Gillespie (Steiger) and the truth comes out that they have the wrong man. Before he can leave town, though, Tibbs finds himself embroiled in the investigation—and ends up leading it—while all around him is the threat of danger due to the color of his skin.

And then there’s the infamous scene which many critics and film historians called “the slap heard around the world.” Tibbs and Gillespie go to a cotton plantation to interview the deceased’s primary competitor, Endicott (Larry Gates), who is obviously put off by being questioned by a black man. At one point, he slaps Tibbs—but Tibbs immediately retaliates by slapping the man in return. In 1967, this was positively shocking. It’s the key moment in this powerfully-directed picture.

Warren Oates and Lee Grant also deliver strong performances as a police deputy and the widow of the murder victim, respectively. With the innovative blues score by Quincy Jones (and title theme sung by Ray Charles), Haskell Wexler’s gritty cinematography, and the perfect script by Silliphant, In the Heat of the Night is one of the classic American films.

The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray contains a 4K digital restoration with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. The visual quality is much improved over the MGM Blu-ray of a few years ago (but, unfortunately, does not include the audio commentary by Jewison, Grant, Steiger, and Wexler from the earlier disk). Still, there are some good supplements. Brand new interviews with Norman Jewison and Lee Grant are informative, especially Grant’s treatise on the blacklisting she had undergone. A new interview with Aram Goudsouzian, author of Sidney Pointer: Man, Actor, Icon, presents a capsule portrait of Poitier and his place in Hollywood through the years. A vintage interview of Poitier from a 2006 AFI piece illustrates the making of the picture. Ported over from the previous MGM disk is the 2008 documentary, Turning Up the Heat: Movie-Making in the 60s, which features Jewison, Wexler, and producer Walter Mirisch, plus contemporary filmmakers John Singleton and Reginal Hudlin on the making of the film. Quincy Jones: Breaking New Sound, also from 2008, explores the movie’s soundtrack and features Jones, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and Herbie Hancock. The theatrical trailer is included, and the accompanying booklet features an essay by critic K. Austin Collins.

In the Heat of the Night is a landmark drama that broke new ground on several fronts… but also at its heart is a cracking good murder mystery! A must-see masterpiece.

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