MGM has released a long-overdue and most welcome special edition of director Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night. The film won the Best Picture Oscar for 1967. Unlike many films that dealt with pressing social issues of their time, Heat never feels dated and remains a crackling good thriller from start to finish. Unless you've been living in a cave for the last forty years, you're probably familiar with the storyline. Set in Ground Zero of the segregationist South, Mississippi, Sidney Poitier is Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs who finds himself the chief suspect in the murder of a prominent businessman in a small town. The redneck cops are ready to railroad him until he informs the local police chief, Rod Steiger, that he, too, is a police officer - and when Steiger asks cynically what he is referred to in the department, Poitier gets to spout one of the screen's classic lines: "They call me Mister Tibbs!" This was groundbreaking stuff forty years ago when many whites in the deep south still couldn't accept the fact that blacks had a right to ride in the front of a bus. Tibbs is ordered to participate in the murder investigation and he forms a reluctant partnership with Steiger. The premise of the two foes gaining gradual respect seems hopelessly cliched today - but this is the film that started it all and the teaming of Poitier and Steiger still outclass all their imitators.
The film boasts an outstanding supporting cast including Lee Grant, Warren Oates, Larry Gates and Scott Wilson. The murder mystery itself is a conventional McGuffin - it's the witches cauldron of racial tension that forms the basis of the storyline. We see the old South through Tibbs' eyes and he is clearly a stranger in a strange land. Even the smallest social courtesies are denied him, but he stoically soldiers on, humiliating his foes by use of sheer logic and a superior education. When Tibbs finally snaps and slaps a white rich man back across the face, it's a seminal moment in movie history.Steiger won the Oscar for uncharacteristically underacting while Poitier was denied a nomination for the best performance of his career. It wasn't due to racism, however- Poitier had been awarded the Best Actor Oscar in 1964 for Lillies of the Field. Ironically, he was so popular in 1967 that I've long theorized that Academy voters split between his performances in Heat, To Sir, With Love and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? with the end result that he knocked himself out of the competition.
MGM's single disc special edition features previously released commentary tracks with Norman Jewison, Rod Steiger, Lee Grant and famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler, whose work on the film still impresses greatly. A making-of documentary, Turning Up the Heat provides some fascinating anecdotes. Jewison says the film could not have been shot in the actual South because of the danger to the cast and crew. It was filmed in southern Illinois, but for one pivotal scene, Poitier had to make an uncomfortable trip south of the Mason Dixon line. The threat of physical violence was so real that he had to sleep with a gun under his pillow. Other featurettes include a tribute to Quincy Jones, whose jazz-filled musical score was groundbreaking, as was the soulful performance of Ray Charles on the title song. Another short featurette examines the social impact of the scene in which Tibbs slaps the white man. The impact crossed racial lines and even whites were cheering for Tibbs. There is also a theatrical trailer included, though strangely the documentaries don't play up the fact that the film spawned two sequels starring Poitier as Tibbs. Sadly, Poitier himself is nowhere to be found on the special edition. The publicity-shy star generally avoids interviews, but one truly wishes he had made an exception for this project. We don't have many leading men with his class and style today and we don't get many thrillers as good as In the Heat of the Night.- Lee Pfeiffer
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