Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) doesn’t bother asking for acceptance or respect from white people. He unequivocally demands it. Unlike Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night is under no delusions that racial prejudice can be corrected merely by white people coming into proximity with intelligent, successful people of color, particularly in a small town like Sparta, Mississippi. Tibbs dons a slick suit, employs a vivid vocabulary, and carries himself with an aura of confidence and import. But he knows he’s firmly entrenched in the Deep South, and when he’s suddenly arrested in humiliating fashion by Officer Sam Wood (Warren Oates), and with no questions asked, Tibbs wisely stays mum and allows himself to be roughly escorted to the police station.
In the Heat of the Night doesn’t satisfy expectations of a traditional narrative structured around an innocent Black man struggling to prove his innocence. When presented to the town’s police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), Tibbs angrily tosses his Philadelphia police badge on the man’s desk, not only insisting on the respect that he’s earned, but taking special joy in boasting of his higher salary and position as Philly’s elite homicide investigator. And while Tibbs’s professional standing causes Gillespie to straighten his shoulders and drop the condescension long enough to all but beg Tibbs to stick around and help out with the homicide investigation, the antagonistic nature of their initial encounter hangs like a dark cloud over the remainder of Jewison’s film.
As the two cops begin the tumultuous process of collaboration, Poitier and Steiger play off one another like two great jazz musicians, using prolonged silences and explosive bursts of pent-up rage with equal aplomb as Tibbs and Gillespie struggle to balance their innate suspicion of one another with the dawning realizations that they must rely on each other to solve a crime. And it’s their precarious and often combative relationship, with the men wavering between intense distrust and making strides to strengthen their alliance during their investigation of Phillip Colbert’s murder, that becomes the guiding principle of the film.
Across scenes that are occasionally thick with disdain, In the Heat of the Night depicts the Sparta locals who are tangentially tied to the murder investigation, but the offbeat humor of these scenes also provides a much-needed levity to the film’s otherwise tense proceedings. Everyone from the aforementioned Sam and the diner owner, Ralph (Anthony James), to Gillespie’s assistant, Courtney (Peter Whitney), are amusing Southern-fried caricatures, but beneath their goofy exteriors lurks something strange and unsettling. Such scenes as Ralph putting the satirical country song “Foul Owl on the Prowl” on the jukebox and awkwardly dancing around the diner get at how this lifestyle of the rural South is fundamentally incompatible with inclusion, especially of a well-educated Black man like Tibbs.
A dichotomy of one sort or another, such as that between Black and white or self and society, underlines almost every moment in the film. As Gillespie uncomfortably acclimates to deferring to the professional expertise of a Black man of higher class, Tibbs copes with his initial resentment at having to rely on a racist white man as his lone protector from the many townspeople who’d, at best, run him out of town. And to the film’s credit, neither of the men’s flaws are swept under the rug. Tibbs’s calm, collected demeanor conceals a brewing undercurrent of indignation that mutates into an impulsive vengeance which drives him to stay in Sparta even after the townsfolks’ death threats become more serious. And while Gillespie grows to admire Tibbs for his skills as an investigator, his prejudices are too deeply embedded to allow a true kinship between them to flourish. Where similar “biracial buddy” films build to a newfound sense of racial unity between their main characters, naïvely suggesting that a white person’s long-held prejudices have been forever eradicated, In the Heat of the Night embraces a more nuanced understanding of how people evolve.
In a complex, emotionally disarming scene late in the film, Tibbs visits Gillespie at his home, where the latter suddenly begins to open up and speak about his loneliness. After asking Tibbs if he’s ever lonely, Tibbs tenderly replies, “No lonelier than you, man,” offering his own feelings of isolation as an olive branch. But Gillespie responds hostilely: “Now, don’t you get smart, Black boy.” The man bristles at receiving even a hint of pity from someone who, in some ways, he will always see as an inferior. Soon after this contentious encounter, the filmmakers attempt to bridge the gap between the two men, as Tibbs boards the train heading out of town and Gillespie musters up an amiable, “You take care, you hear?” The two men smile in a sort of tacit admission of mutual respect after having caught the murderer.
James Baldwin astutely referred to this moment as a form of reconciliation akin to that of a movie kiss. But by positioning this final scene of supposed racial harmony so soon after the earlier moment when Gillespie’s prejudice resurfaces with a vengeance, the film takes on a bittersweet quality. The men’s final goodbye portends hope while subtly, yet cynically, acknowledging that Gillespie’s feelings of camaraderie with a Black man are fleeting, that his racism will almost certainly endure long after Tibbs’s train has pulled out of the station.
Image/Sound
Kino’s 4K transfer improves on Criterion’s already magnificent 2019 Blu-ray, especially in terms of image depth and detail. In addition to the color grading faithfully honoring the naturalistic dimensions of Haskell Wexler’s cinematography, the blacks are more precise here, and the higher contrast ratio allows for more of the frame to remain visible in the numerous nighttime scenes. The 5.1 audio is also a marked upgrade from the Criterion disc, with a cleaner separation between all the ambient background sounds in outdoor scenes and a richer, more robust presentation of Quincy Jones’s fantastic soundtrack.
Extras
Kino’s release includes a few of the best extras from Criterion’s release: one short documentary on Quincy Jones, another on movie-making in the 1960s, and a wonderful commentary track featuring Norman Jewison, Haskell Wexler, Lee Grant, and Rod Steiger that nicely balances discussion of the film’s social import and the technical aspects of its making. Kino has also added a second commentary track featuring film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson, who are joined by Robert Mirisch, nephew of the film’s producer, Walter Mirisch. It’s a lively discussion that heaps plenty of deserved praise on Sydney Poitier and touches on the genesis of the screenplay and the wheeling and dealing of the Mirisch Corporation throughout the 1960s, when it produced three best picture winners. The package also includes a featurette on the scene where Poitier’s character slaps a wealthy, white businessman, and more importantly, both of the film’s sequels (They Call Me Mister Tibbs! and The Organization) on the accompanying Blu-ray disc.
Overall
With its stellar slate of extras, which includes both sequels, and top-notch A/V presentation, Kino’s 4K release is now the definitive home video edition of In the Heat of the Night.
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