The Sparta, Mississippi precinct. The atmosphere is tense. Exasperated, Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) has just taken Harvey Oberst (Scott Wilson) into custody as a suspect in the Colbert murder case. A Black detective from Philadelphia, Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), is called in—not as a visitor, but as a necessary threat to the town’s presumptions.Tibbs finds an important detail: Oberst is left-handed, a “southpaw,” but the analysis of “the angle of the fatal blow” indicates that the blow came from a right-handed man. Gillespie is reluctant to accept a Black man’s analysis. That’s why it irritates and unsettles him even more when his deputees confirm the validity of Tibbs’ analysis. In that fit of frustration, and to ridicule Tibbs’ self-assurance, he says Virgil is a funny name for a “Negro” and asks what people call him in Philadelphia.Tibbs stops, meets Gillespie’s gaze, and shoots back with a restrained anger:“They call me Mister Tibbs!” It may sound like a simple answer to a twisted question, but it’s so much more than that. In the middle of a conversation, it deals with racism, demands respect, and declares identity.How that moment came to be, and why it still has resonance decades later—that’s what we are going to find out here.The Crucible: In the Heat of the Night and a Nation on EdgeA Story for Its TimeIn the Heat of the Night was released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. Everywhere, racial violence, voter suppression, and segregation were headlines. It was revolutionary...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Today