Casino Royale (1967)

 

The film version of Casino Royale from 1967 is most definitely not the serious-minded film with Daniel Craig from 2006. This adaptation is much sillier, a goofy parody of the four Bond films (with Sean Connery) that had already appeared during the 1960s. Sir James Bond (played with his usual debonair air by David Niven) has retired from service as 007, but spies from various countries—Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France—have been disappearing, so he’s pressed back into service. What follows is a series of explosions, killings, quirky gadgets, and the usual barrage of other spy movie stereotypes, just what you might expect in a Bond film. However, Casino Royale also features some trippy psychedelic visuals and cameos by such movie luminaries as George Raft, Peter O’Toole, and Jean Paul Belmondo. Even a young and already stunning Jacqueline Bissett (billed as “Jacky Bissett”) gets a brief scene where she seduces one of the several James Bonds the film includes. Casino Royale also has extended performances from some great stars. My favorite performance is by Deborah Kerr, who plays M’s widow with the thickest of Scottish brogues and lots of homicidal daughters. Her part of the story involves an attempt to kill Bond after a night of drinking and haggis-eating and dancing and physical competition—pretty strange stuff overall—and that’s even before the day-after-the-funeral grouse hunt. In fact, many of the film’s narrative elements make no sense other than as a way to lampoon the more serious Bond films. For example, when Niven takes over Britain’s spy agency, he thinks they need to find a Bond who can resist women as a way to counteract the image being perpetuated by the “other” Bond films – well, actually, the weakness for sexy women seems to be linked to the disappearance of the spies. This moment does give a lot of beautiful women the opportunity to earn the title of “Bond girl” and for Terence Cooper to kiss a lot of them. Arguably, the most famous Bond girl of them all, Ursula Andress of Dr. No fame, gets recruited by Niven’s Sir James to get the author of a book on how to play baccarat, Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to help defeat Orson Welles’ Le Chiffre at the title casino. Welles’ character, you see, is funding SMERSH, the group responsible for kidnapping all of the spies from around the world. He’s also, inexplicably, performing magic tricks at the baccarat table, much to the amazement of the assembled crowd. Andress and Sellers seem to be having the most fun among the actors, Andress winking at her iconic status here as a rich and extravagantly wardrobed double agent who’s always a step ahead of the men she encounters and Sellers getting a couple of moments to wear costumes much like his famed character Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies. The film does add a nice touch in its inclusion of a younger actors to link characters to the more famous Bond franchise. Miss Moneypenny’s daughter (Barbara Bouchet) is now the new Moneypenny, and Sir James recruits his daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Hari (Joanna Pettet), to help him infiltrate the German school that trains female spies. Most important to the plot, though, is Woody Allen as Sir James’ nephew Jimmy. He only has a few minutes on screen, but his role is integral to tidying up as best it can the convoluted and scattered threads of the plot. By the time the American cavalry—on horseback—shows up, followed by a group of dancing Native Americans, a viewer might be exhausted from having watched an abduction by a spaceship and a gang of gun-toting women in minidresses. The visual overload is quite astonishing. Casino Royale could have easily been nominated for its costume design, which is gloriously mod, or its production design, which is spectacular, but it had to settle for just one nomination: Best Original Song for “The Look of Love,” which plays as the romantic theme when Sellers and Ursula Andress are seducing each other. (Well, to be fair, she’s doing more of the work.) It’s sung in the film by one of the greatest singers of all time, Dusty Springfield, and its inclusion is a true highlight. By the way, the instrumental theme, written by Burt Bacharach and performed by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, is also amazing.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“The Look of Love”)

Camelot (1967)

 

Camelot is one of the more famous (or infamous) roadshow musical films of the 1960s. An adaptation of the Broadway musical that starred Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet, the film version features instead Richard Harris as King Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Guinevere, and Franco Nero as Sir Lancelot—none of whom are especially well known for their talent for singing. Harris would later release a “hit” version of the song “MacArthur Park,” but here his prowess at vocalizing is not on full display. In fact, he’s not even particularly adept at lip synching to his prerecorded tracks. Redgrave’s singing is passable, but her voice is rather thin in many of her numbers. Nero’s thick Italian accent makes his speaking voice difficult to follow at times, so it’s little surprise that Lancelot’s songs were dubbed by Gene Merlino instead. The film, like the musical on which it is based, covers some of the more familiar moments of the Arthurian legend: the beginnings of the relationship between Arthur and Guinevere, the formation (and later dissolution) of the Round Table, the arrival of Sir Lancelot from France and his burgeoning relationship with Guinevere, the attempted creation of an impartial court system, and the emotional struggle Arthur faces in charging his wife and his best-loved knight with treason. While there’s a lot of potential for excitement here, much of the film is really quite boring. Only a few moments break through the tedium. For instance, Guinevere doesn’t like the Frenchman much at first, so she sets up three of his rivals at the Round Table to defeat him, but when he almost kills one of them and cries over the potential loss of his fellow knight, Guinevere and Lancelot begin to bond with each other. In the film’s second act, their relationship becomes a more central focus, and the chemistry between the two is quite evident (no doubt due, in part, to the real-life relationship between Redgrave and Nero). Similarly, the songs are all well-known and quite lovely lyrically, but for me, only a couple of the film’s versions are worthy of attention: “The Lusty Month of May” and “If Ever I Would Leave You.” The rest of the songs sound more like a community theater production of Camelot. The arrival of Mordred (David Hemmings), Arthur’s illegitimate son by Morgause (who never appears on screen), briefly energizes the film thanks to Hemmings’ impish appeal, but his role is rather small. It’s actually little more than a plot device to ensure that Guinevere and Lancelot get caught. There’s also very little of Merlyn in this film, sadly, only a couple of small moments, and when he transforms Arthur into first a fish and then a hawk, those changes are not depicted on screen—a lost opportunity to insert some much-needed cinematic magic. Another missed opportunity involves the sets and costumes, which obviously received a lot of attention from the production team. As beautiful as they often are, though, many of the colors used in the film are quite drab, perhaps in a misguided attempt to be “realistic” in the depiction of the clothes and settings of the Middle Ages. Who at the time would have necessarily wanted realism in the film version of a lavish Broadway musical? (Who, necessarily, would want it now?) Hollywood keeps remaking films that have gone on to become classics, but it would make more sense to remake a film like Camelot, one that wasn’t actually successful. There is a great story here and some beautiful music; they just need a better film to encompass them.

Oscar Wins: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Scoring of Music (Adaptation or Treatment)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Cinematography and Best Sound

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Bonnie and Clyde is one of (at least) two groundbreaking movies to come out in 1967; the other was The Graduate. The fact that both of them were nominated for Best Picture is a testament to the foresight of the members of the Academy. That both of them lost to In the Heat of the Night is an indication that the total number of Academy members with foresight was too small indeed that year. Perhaps it was the violence, so unexpected in a mainstream film then, that put off the voters, or maybe it was the frequent discussion of sexual matters that led them to choose a "safer" film to be awarded Best Picture. Regardless of the reason, anyone looking at the list of nominees for that year would certainly pick either The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde; personally, I'm leaning toward Bonnie and Clyde because of its brilliant script by David Newman and Robert Benton and the great performances by most of the cast and its innovative style.

The film is the story of two of the most notorious bank robbers of the 1930s, a couple whose fame spread way beyond Texas and Missouri and Oklahoma, the states where they committed most of their crimes. People everywhere seem to have heard of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and the members of their gang. Obviously, the film version romanticizes these outlaws, and it makes them more attractive than their real-life counterparts in multiple ways. There are several photos of the two of them, and I can assure you that they don't look anything like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

At first, the two of them are really rather inept at robbing banks. The first bank they try to rob, for example, failed three weeks earlier and has no money. Bonnie has a big laugh about that. Clyde almost gets killed by a butcher when he tries to rob a grocery store, and even after they add C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) to the gang to serve as the getaway driver, he almost gets them caught by parallel parking the car and then not being able to get it out of the space quickly enough. After the addition of Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman) to the gang, they become more successful at robbing banks if not at acquiring huge sums of money. The legend begins to grow very quickly, and rumors of the Barrow gang spread throughout the country.

In its depictions of the newspaper accounts of Bonnie and Clyde, the film addresses the issue of celebrity and how enticing it can be and how debilitating as well. Bonnie and Clyde love seeing their names in the paper; Bonnie even pens a poem about their exploits that gets published. However, when the information is incorrect, such as when a robbery is attributed to them by mistake, Clyde can get furious. He seems to want to control the image of the two of them, but it has quickly gotten out of hand. C.W. notes that even Buck gets mentioned in the newspapers at times, but he is never identified. That may be good in terms of what eventually happens to the rest of the gang, but he undoubtedly feels a bit left out of the notoriety. He, like Clyde and Bonnie, becomes more than a little distracted by what others are saying about them.

The film also indulges in a bit of revenge fantasy. Bonnie and Clyde begin robbing banks as a way to get back at the banks that began taking over houses and forcing people to leave their homes during the Great Depression. Given the increasing wealth gap at the time of the film’s release in 1967, contemporaneous audiences must have felt that aspect of the film to be quite relevant. The shots of the run-down towns the gang travels through evoke some strong imagery of the time period, and the film shows some beautiful sequences of driving along country road and through wheatfields and cornfields. The cinematography was justly recognized by the Academy; it’s a beautiful film even when we’re seeing just how depressing the times were.

This movie is also quite obsessed with penises. Well, really, it's just obsessed with one penis, the one belonging to Clyde. I don't know if the real Clyde Barrow was impotent, but Beatty plays him here as a man who wants to have sex but cannot seem to attain an erection. As he keeps telling Bonnie, he's "not much of a lover boy." Dunaway portrays Bonnie as perpetually frustrated by Clyde's inability to consummate their relationship. Her Bonnie becomes obsessed with his penis or anything that is meant to resemble or substitute for it. When they first meet, he shows her his gun, surreptitiously, of course, and she strokes the pistol's barrel as if she were going to deflower Clyde on the spot. She tries oral sex on Clyde, but that fails to arouse him. Later in the film, when she is posing for pictures, she takes Clyde's cigar from his mouth and puts it into her own. If he can't be a "real" man, I suppose, she can be—at least, in the photograph. Of course, she can only take on the trappings of masculinity. She can carry a gun of her own (after Clyde shows her how to shoot), and she can play with his cigar, but he isn't going to satisfy her sexually. It's all very Freudian stuff, isn't it, all of this penis envy and castration anxiety? By the way, it must have been fun for Beatty, such a notorious womanizer, to play someone who is unable to satisfy a woman.

All of the five lead performers were nominated for Oscars. The most egregious loss was Dunaway's defeat by Katherine Hepburn in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Hepburn has little to do in her film other than look lovingly at Spencer Tracy’s character. Dunaway and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, on the other hand, give unique and intriguing takes on their roles, and either one would have been a more worthy recipient. Beatty, as beautiful and charming as he is here, isn’t quite as good as Dunaway. We don’t learn much about his underlying motivations except for his obvious familial loyalty to his brother. He served as both actor and producer on Bonnie and Clyde and would in later years add director and writer to his resume. I think he’s better in Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait, for example, than he is here.

Hackman as Buck and Pollard as C.W. are both good here, and they competed against each other for Best Supporting Actor. I would give the edge to Pollard because he has a more intriguing character arc. He gets to change and become stronger as the plot progresses. Hackman, by comparison, doesn’t have as much to do other than be the faithful, supportive brother and husband. Oddly enough, Estelle Parsons was the only member of the cast to win an Oscar; hers was for Best Supporting Actress. However, I find hers to be the weakest performance of the five main actors. As Buck’s wife, she’s prone to screaming and complaining, neither of which endear her to an audience.

The scene in the film that has naturally and justifiably gotten the most attention is the one where Bonnie and Clyde are tricked by Mr. Moss, C.W.’s father (Dub Taylor), into stopping by the side of a road. There they are surrounded by police, who fire upon the robbers without mercy. It's pretty horrific to watch, frankly, as their bodies writhe from the bullets shattering them. And it seems to go on and on and on even though it only lasts about twenty seconds. The film goes into slow motion at one point, and I suspect many people think that sequence, in particular, glorifies the depiction of violence. A film about bank robbers, especially famous ones, has to include the violence for which they were known. It is a bloody film, certainly, but the context calls for it. When we see someone get shot, it's more realistic to see the blood that comes from such a wound. Later films would, unsurprisingly, become even more graphic and filled with violence, but Bonnie and Clyde paved the way for those more realistic depictions that followed.

Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons) and Best Cinematography

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Arthur Penn), Best Actor (Warren Beatty), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard), Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, and Best Costume Design

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, a nominee for Best Picture of 1967, must have seemed old-fashioned even when it was initially released. In the midst of the civil rights movements of the 1960s, it must have been rather quaint to watch a white, middle-aged (to be charitable), liberal couple come to terms with the fact that their daughter is going to marry a black man. This film is perhaps best known now as being the final collaboration between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, as well as being Tracy's last film before he died. Given those two factors, I can understand why the Academy chose to include this film among its top five choices for that pivotal year of 1967, but watching it nowadays, one is struck by how much it truly caters to the white audience.

Tracy and Hepburn play Matt and Christina Drayton, a successful couple living in San Francisco who have taught their daughter Joey/Joanna (Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's niece in real life) to treat everyone equally. And that's just what she does. During a vacation in Hawaii, she meets and falls in love with Dr. John Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier), and they come to visit the Draytons to seek their blessing. Hepburn's Christina is on board almost immediately, of course, but Matt needs more time. Joey, however, gives him one day to make up his mind because Dr. Prentice is leaving for New York and then Switzerland for his work.

All of the action of the film takes place in just one day, and much of it occurs in the Drayton home. There is one scene where Matt and Christina go for ice cream just to get a break from thinking about Joey and her fiance. That sequence is designed to show just how out of touch Tracy's Matt is. He can't even remember which flavor of ice cream he likes. That he comes to enjoy the flavor he's brought is supposed to be a revelatory moment, I suppose, but you don't really need that heavy-handed of a metaphor to get the point.

Dr. Prentice's parents (played by Roy E. Glenn Sr. and the lovely Beah Richards) come up to San Francisco from Los Angeles once they hear of the engagement. Mr. Prentice and Matt have a serious talk about their objections to the marriage. Mrs. Prentice and Christina have a talk about their support for the marriage. Mr. Prentice talks with his son. John talks with Matt. This is a very chatty movie overall. Much of the talk is, of course, about what kinds of obstacles the couple will face after they are married. If their parents are any indication, they're in for a lot of contradictory reactions.

Of course, the big scene, the one everyone both in the movie and in the audience is waiting for, is the one in which Matt reveals how he feels about the engagement. I know that it is meant to be the key moment of the film, but having a older white man determine whether or not his daughter and her fiance should get married smacks of a continuation of the existing power structure. Yes, I know that's what the speech is all about, but really, it's still delivered by an old white man. The future bride and groom are supporting players here, as are all of the African Americans. Poitier, even though he's the co-star, defers to Tracy's Matt, and the Prentices are only on screen for a brief period of time. Ironically, the most vocal African American in the film is Tillie, the servant (!) played by the great Isabel Sanford, and she makes some of the most racist comments in the movie, even using the N-word to describe Poitier's accomplished doctor and repeatedly calling him "boy." How this film won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay--over Bonnie and Clyde, no less, and Two for the Road--remains a mystery to me.

By the way, if you ever question the depth of love the Academy had/has for Katharine Hepburn, just realize that she won Best Actress for this role, yet she has so very little to do in the movie except to listen. I suppose she gets to be teary-eyed at the end while Tracy, her long-time lover, delivers a speech about how happy they have been together, but she was up against such strong performances as Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Hepburn would win again the next year for a far stronger performance in The Lion in Winter, but you have to be puzzled over how she was chosen from the roster for 1967.

Despite the pleasure of watching Tracy and Hepburn together for the final time, I can't really say that I enjoyed this movie. It takes far too patronizing an attitude toward the black characters, and they are all so willing to allow for the white man to have the final say. I know that the movie makes Poitier's doctor too good to be true so that the only questions will be what kind of life he will have with Joey or whether they have decided too quickly to be married. Yet even taking that step makes the filmmakers so overly cautious, unwilling or unable to allow the audience to think in a more complex way about race relations. Ultimately, I think this movie fails in its attempts to bridge whatever gaps between the races it was attempting to bridge, and I think it probably wasn't that successful even in 1967.

Doctor Dolittle (1967)

The title sequence for Doctor Dolittle is quite charming with its animated animals presenting the names of the filmmakers. An alligator opens its mouth, for example, to reveal the source material (a series of novels by Hugh Lofting), and three birds "bring" the names of the supporting cast to a perch. After that, however, the charm is pretty much non-existent. This was an expensive musical flop when it opened, and it's often cited as an example of how easily Academy members could be persuaded by vigorous studio campaigns to nominate behemoths like this. Studios benefited from (and still do) Oscar nominations, so Doctor Dolittle received eight of them, shockingly winning two awards (Best Special Effects and Best Original Song for "Talk to the Animals").

The story concerns the good doctor (played by Rex Harrison as if he were exhausted from doing the 400th touring company of My Fair Lady), a veterinarian in 1850s England, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, to be specific. No one understands him and his affection for animals, well, no one human except for his friend Matthew Mugg (Anthony Newley), who delivers fish to women in the town for their cats and dogs to eat. Certainly, the magistrate, aptly named General Bellowes (played by Peter Bull as if either his last name or the character's last name is a stage direction), doesn't understand why Dolittle would put glasses on a horse so it could see better or try to preserve a fox from the brutality of the hunt after its mate has been slaughtered.

The magistrate's niece, though, Emma Fairfax (Samantha Egger), is another story. Initially, she too despises Dolittle because of the way he treats her uncle. Gradually, of course, she starts to understand the depth of his concern for the animals he treats, and despite a number of initial hints that she and Matthew are falling in love, she instead chooses the older (far, far older) man to be her love interest. He, naturally, is oblivious to her charms, even going so far as to sing a song entitled "I Think I Like You," a virtual rehash of the sentiments in "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" from Harrison's earlier stage and film success. Why she doesn't stick with Matthew and leave Dolittle to his animals is a mystery the film never bothers to address.

I should mention that before Dolittle romances Emma (who is repeated called "Fred" by Newley's Matthew for reasons that are just too silly), he sings a love song to a seal ("When I Look in Your Eyes"). The seal, you see, needs to be rescued from a circus so that she can be reunited with her husband who's at the North Pole, which hasn't even been discovered yet by mankind. Dolittle knows about the seal's dilemma because he's been raising money by allowing the circus to display a rare animal called a Pushme-Pullyu, a sort of llama with heads at both ends. A friend of his in Tibet has sent him the Pushme-Pullyu because the friend knows that Dolittle wants to go in search of the Great Pink Sea Snail and needs to buy a boat for the journey. No, that’s not a convoluted plot for a children’s movie at all.

All of these plot machinations are possible because Dolittle has the ability to understand all kinds of animals, thanks to help of a parrot named Miss Polynesia (or something to that effect), who is almost 200 years old and speaks about 2000 animal languages. We learn about this from an oddly choreographed number to "Talk to the Animals" (which beat out "The Look of Love" from Casino Royale and "The Bare Necessities" from The Jungle Book for the Best Song Oscar—appalling). And, throughout the film, Harrison has to interact with all kinds of animals in order to translate for the rest of us. It must have been quite a feat to train and keep an eye on all of the various creatures who appear throughout the film.

Does this sound silly and/or muddled to anyone else? I recall as a child having a Doctor Dolittle coloring book with some of the more familiar scenes in it, such as the seal being garbed in a woman's hat with veil so that she could ride a coach to Bristol and be thrown into the sea. (That act gets Dolittle sentenced to an insane asylum for his claims that he can talk to animals.) And I'm sure that I saw the movie when I was younger as well, but I could barely stand to watch this time.

As an aside, I do think this movie is interesting as one of the earliest defenses of animal protection and animal rights. Dolittle explains (in song, no less) why he is a vegetarian (something like "one shouldn't eat his friends"). And he stands opposed to fox hunting, an English tradition that has been the subject of a great deal of controversy over its cruelty to the foxes, which are hunted for their fur. Those sentiments wouldn't be out of place even today. Of course, he does still participate in the training of animals for the circus, so he’s not perfect… and he does have a taste now and them for meat.

There are a couple of other intriguing moments. Richard Attenborough has a small part as Blossom, the head of the circus Dolittle turns to as a money-making venture. His song "I've Never Seen Anything Like It" is quite fun, with all of the circus folks and the animals joining in. And Newley gets to display his trademark vibrato on "After Today," arguably the best song of the score (which, admittedly, isn't saying much). I also particularly enjoyed the appearance of Geoffrey Holder as William Shakespeare X, or "Willie," the leader of Sea Star Island, the floating island Dolittle and his friends travel to in hopes of finding the sea snail. Not only does Holder seem like he's enjoying himself, he's actually quite spectacular looking in an orange wraparound brief-and-robe combo that is accented with shells. That's not a look many men could manage to pull off, but Holder does.

Still, there are far too many false steps in this movie to consider it one of the year's best of 1967 or any other year. The Pushme-Pullyu and the Giant Pink Sea Snail look too fake even to be campy (although they look brilliant compared to the octopus that looks like it stepped out of an Ed Wood film). Most of the music is pretty mundane as well, despite having been penned by Leslie Bricusse. Harrison seems to be having an awful time, and Newley keeps getting saddled with having to ask such odd questions as "What can you hope to get out of a conversation with a goldfish?" Presumably, that dialogue was meant to be funny in 1967, but I doubt it worked. Don't even get me started on the pacing of this film, as it takes almost two-and-a-half hours to unspool. I can't imagine many children sitting still for that long unless a lot more action takes place.

I would like to give credit to the production design team for the look of Dolittle’s home office and to the ship on which he and his friends sail in search of the Giant Pink Sea Snail. They’re marvelously done, and the various props really do make them seem like they belong in the Victorian era.

Yes, I've seen the Eddie Murphy remake and at least one of its sequels, but I don't think it's truly a remake so much as a reimagining. The film with Murphy doesn't borrow anything from this film except for Dolittle's ability to talk to and understand animals, and that was probably a good thing.

Oscar Wins: Best Special Effects and Best Song ("Talk to the Animals")

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Original Song Score or Adaptation Score, and Best Sound 

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Winner of the Best Picture for 1967, In the Heat of the Night is the story of two men: a racist small-town police chief and an African-American police detective from Philadelphia with the misfortune to be stopped in Sparta, Mississippi, on the night a murder is committed. After being hauled to the police station and having his identity revealed, the detective reluctantly agrees to help the chief in the investigation. He is, after all, a homicide expert back in Pennsylvania--quite convenient for the movie's plot, isn't it? As the movie unfolds, the two men have to learn to work together despite their dislike for and mistrust of one another.

Rod Steiger won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Chief Gillespie, but I don't really see that he's doing anything particularly noteworthy in this performance. Any number of actors could have played this part just as well. His most distinguishing characteristic, in fact, seems to be his ability always to have gum to chew. He exercises his jaw muscles quite vigorously throughout this film. I suppose he does come to appreciate the talents of his fellow policeman by the end of the movie, but I suspect that as complicated as his reaction to a successful black detective might be, it would be overly simplistic to assume that he is no longer a racist after his encounter with this one man. The fact that he saves the detective from being attacked or that he forces some of the whites in town to cooperate with a black man in this investigation is less a sign of a growing sense of enlightenment on his part than a desperate need to solve the case so that he can go back to running the police department (and the town) in his own way.

Sidney Poitier is, of course, the detective from the North who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's not a very showy part for Poitier overall; he really just has to be methodical in his investigation of the murder, demonstrating to the white police force and the racist townspeople that he is indeed smarter than they are. Given how quickly the chief jumps to conclusions each time he arrests another suspect in the case, it's not that difficult for Poitier's Virgil Tibbs to outshine Gillespie and the other officers. And, naturally, he must continue to elude the attempts by the racist townsfolk to harm him, no small feat given how outnumbered he is.

Poitier really only gets two spectacular moments in the movie, and both have been thoroughly analyzed over the years. When the chief asks, using racist language, what Virgil is called up North, Poitier replies, "They call me Mr. Tibbs." There is a fury in that line that no doubt inspired many people back when the film was released; it's still a great comeback on his part. The other moment, in my opinion, is even better, though. After the richest man in town, the orchid-growing Endicott, slaps Tibbs for implying that he was involved in the murder, Poitier slaps him right back, stunning Endicott and the police chief and a servant. That must have been a revelatory moment in 1967, akin to the appearance of Shaft just a few years later. Black characters just didn't do those kinds of things in the movies then, at least not without some retaliation, which is just what Endicott tells Tibbs after being slapped (although not in the context of it happening in a movie, of course).

The supporting cast includes the fantastic Lee Grant as the wife of the slain man. It's her insistence that keeps Tibbs on the case; she threatens to take away her husband's money that has been promised to bring new industry to the town. Warren Oates is also good as one of the police officers. He actually is key to several plot points: he finds the dead man's body, he arrests Tibbs, he is linked to a young girl who likes to walk around her house naked (and who later is relevant to the movie's outcome), he even gets accused of the murder himself at one point--all moments that allow Oates to showcase his talents for underplaying.

In his book Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris asserts that the selection of In the Heat of the Night was a middle-of-the-road option for the Academy that year. On the one hand, there were nominees like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde that were forging a new type of Hollywood film, and on the other side, there were nominees like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (which also features a performance by Poitier) and Doctor Doolittle that represented a more old-fashioned Hollywood ethos. I'm inclined to accept Harris' premise because In the Heat of the Night does represent an opportunity for its filmmakers to show the intelligence and calm thoughtfulness of a character like Virgil Tibbs, and that was particularly rare in the 1960s. Poitier's Tibbs is really the focus of the film, and the fact that he comes across as more adept at police work than a man who thinks he is Tibbs' superior is all the more admirable.

Certainly, the deck is rather stacked in the portrayal of the whites in this small town. (Isn't that always the case in movies that deal with race relations in the South?) All of the whites are insufferably racist, except (of course) for the white woman from the North whose husband has been murdered. A gang of whites tries to attack and kill Tibbs for no apparent reason other than his skin color. He's refused service at the diner where Oates' Officer Wood likes to stop for a Coke and a slice of pie. Even when he tries to inspect the body of the dead man, he gets no assistance from the funeral director, who just seems puzzled by the arrival of this black man with the police chief. He has to share a cell for a time with a man who, at least initially, spouts racist comments. To be morally and intellectually superior to people such as this is no great challenge, it seems to me. That Tibbs manages to maintain an air of dignity in the company of such people is a testament to Poitier's talents as an actor more than to the script and its use of what were tired stereotypes even then.