In the Heat of the Night

Last night I watched my third of the movies nominated for best picture from 1967 (earlier posts here, here, and here). In the Heat of the Night is the picture that actually won the award, and Rod Steiger won for best actor. Poitier was not nominated; he made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, With Love in the same year, and wasn't nominated for any picture...he was getting a bit frustrated by playing these inhumanly perfect men.

Had I been given a ballot, I think I would also have voted for Steiger, but would have given my vote for best picture to The Graduate (it doesn't happen often that best director and best picture are awarded to different movies, but The Graduate won best director for Mike Nichols, which must have made Norman Jewison of Heat feel slighted).

The general feeling seems to be that it won the award over Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate based on Hollywood's liberal sentiments on racial politics combined with conservatism about how movies ought to be made. Perhaps...but it is still an enjoyable movie for all that, and I would recommend it.

Overall I think Pauline Kael gets it right:

In the Heat of the Night isn't in itself a particularly important movie; amazing alive photographically [me: this is captured very well in the DVD], it's an entertaining, somewhat messed-up comedy-thriller. The director Norman Jewison destroys the final joke when Steiger plays redcap to Poitier by infusing it with tender feeling, so it comes out sickly sweet, and it's too bad that a whodunit in which the whole point is the demonstration of the Negro detective's ability to unravel what the white man can't, is never clearly unraveled [me: true...the ending and revelations are quite rushed and unclear]. ... (The picture might have been more than just a lively whodunit if the detective had proceeded to solve the crime not by "scientific" means but by an understanding of relationships in the South that the white chief of police didn't have). What makes it interesting for my purposes here is that the audience enjoyed the movie for the vitality of its surprising playfulness, while the industry congratulated itself because the film was "hard-hitting" - that is to say, it flirted with seriousness and spouted warm, worthwhile ideas.

From For Keeps (p. 215).