Stars: Sidney Poitier (Detective Virgil Tibbs), Rod Steiger (Police Chief Bill Gillespie), Lee Grant (Leslie Colbert), Warren Oates (Officer Sam Wood )
Director: Norman Jewison
Awards / Honors
- 5 Oscar Wins - Best Picture, Best Actor (Rod Steiger), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Film Editing, Best Sound
- 2 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Director, Best Sound Editing
- #19 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villians list - Virgil Tibbs, Hero (2003)
- #16 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list - "They call me Mister Tibbs!" (2005)
- #21 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
- #75 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2006)
- In 2002, In the Heat of the Night was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 1 Hour, 49 minutes
Format: DVD (not yet available on Blu-ray)
Odyssey Rating: 5 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 5 Stars, Jon - 5 Stars, Becky - 5 Stars)
John's Take
In my review of Patton, I chastised the American Film Institute for what they included and didn’t include on their list of 100 greatest movie quotes. If I am going to chastise them when they get it wrong then I need to applaud them when they get it right, and they certainly got it right when they included a quote from In the Heat of the Night. Myself, Beth and Official Friends of Beth and John’s Movie Odyssey, Jon and Becky, all together, unprompted, and in perfect unison mimicked Sidney Poitier as he responds to being sarcastically asked what they call him in Philadelphia with the line: "They call me Mister Tibbs!" That is a great line. It so great, it has so worked our way into our public psyche that Beth was able to mimic the line along with the rest of us and she hadn’t seen the movie before! When lines from movies you have never seen make it to your subconscious – that when you know you have something special. And In the Heat of the Night is something special.
For those of you who don’t know, In the Heat of the Night is the story of Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a Philadelphia police detective who just happens to be passing through the fictional small town of Sparta, Mississippi and finds himself – slightly unwillingly – helping the local police force solve a murder case. Needless to say, many of the fine folks of Sparta are not thrilled with the idea of an African American leading the investigation, including the Chief of Police, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger). Released in the same year as another Poitier classic (and #124 on our list), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, these two movies are very different takes on race relations in America. Guess Who was the happy fable – the view of how things could be. In the Heat of the Night was (and sadly still is in some cases) a more realistic presentation of how things actually were. While it is not exactly fair to compare the two films since Guess Who is a comedy and In the Heat of the Night is a drama, it is clear that In the Heat of the Night is aging better.
That is because Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner ultimately fall victim to the After-School-Special-Syndrome, a condition very prevalent among “issue films”. The identifying symptom of this condition is the one-dimensionality of the characters – absolutely good or absolutely evil. This one-dimensionality is particularly true of characters such as Joey Drayton, Dr. John Prentice and nearly all the minor, supporting characters. In the Heat of the Night, on the other hand, has very well developed characters. Chief Gillespie is a prejudiced man who is actually sympathetic and capable of growth. Virgil Tibbs is also shown to be capable of prejudice, as he pursues Endicott without sufficient evidence. Virgil isn’t above using the local population’s fear of the police to his advantage either (“Now listen, hear me good mama. Please. Don't make me have to send you to jail... There's white time in jail and there's colored time in jail. The worst kind of time you can do is colored time.”).
It is the fact that the movie portrays an entire spectrum of prejudice, from the crazy extremists to the more subtle forms, which is what ultimately sets it apart from not only from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, but To Sir, Sir With Love (another Poitier movie released that year – 1967 was big year for Sidney Poitier), The Chase, and Hurry Sundown. Virgil, Gillespie, and the other characters all come off as real people. Nobody is completely good. Nobody is completely evil.
The first of the 25 movies we watched, Toy Story, garnered a perfect rating of 5 Stars. It is a pleasant coincidence that this film, the first of the second set of 25 also gets the same score. If you haven’t seen this film, I cannot recommend it enough. In the Heat of the Night gets a rating of 5 Stars.
BETH'S TAKE:
Awesome film! I also like the TV show.
My problem with movies of this topic and of this time is that I didn't grow up in this era. I do get fustrated watching such films. I have never seen obvious prejudice, at least that I know of. I have always been around so many races and cultures that I can't even believe people believed that one race/culture is better than another. I praise my parents for raising myself and my siblings so humbly if that is even a word :)
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