101 comments

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  gerardjones

  1 year ago

  Thanks for running this forum--and thanks, Campaspe, for telling your fans about it. I don't know that I'll have a lot to say, as I haven't seen Heat since it first came out. I was 10 years old and saw it with my parents--my mom was from Mississippi and was a civil rights activist, so it was a must see for her. What I find impressive, though, is how vividly I still moments from it. The dame in the cemetery, Tibbs fighting off the cracker's attack, Gillespie's ultimate acknowledgment of Tibbs's rightness. Those moments are burned into me--not only the dramatic content but the color, composition and faces.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Haskell Wexler's cinematography is an indispensable part of this movie. He used low light and a forced-development technique that gave even more of a gritty feel. The end result is that the film reminds you of the documentary footage everybody has seen from that era, but it doesn't veer into self-conscious artiness that would throw you out of the mood of what's still essentially a thriller.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  As Lance notes in his post, I "remember" the movie as a kid in black and white - I'm always surprised it's in color. So gritty.
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  gerardjones

  1 year ago

  I'm glad to know Wexler's involvement. I know some of his '70s and later stuff, and I see the continuity. The visual aesthetic was powerful enough that even a 10 year old who knew nothing of such things could feel the difference. My parents took me mostly to glossy movies--Thoroughly Modern Millie, Dr. Dolittle, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner--and to black-and-white foreign flicks when they couldn't afford a babysitter. Our other venue for movies was our b&w TV. This was a shockingly different look from all of them. Sweat and faces ugly in intensity--it all felt disturbingly real to my little self.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Hey, guys sorry I’m late. But here’s a topic: was there ever a more unique and irreplaceable character actor than Warren Oates?
  
  IMDB quotes an exchange from Heat of the Night that somehow encapsulates his career:
  
  Ofcr. Sam Wood: Where you keeping the pie tonight?
  Ralph Henshaw, diner counterman: I ate the last piece just before you came in.
  
  Nobody played one of life’s eternal losers better than Warren Oates.
  
  Anyone remember his death scene from Major Dundee? He knows he’s going to get shot for desertion, and he accepts his fate. He squints up at the bright sky, at the world, for one last time. He tells Charlton Heston’s Dundee that Dundee’s just doing what he has to do, but he curses him anyway, and God-blesses Robert E. Lee. Then to spare him the firing squad his former commanding officer, Richard Harris’s Tyreen, draws his gun and shoots him dead. Brilliant.
  
  And what a brilliant if brief career as a leading man. Nobody else could have come close to what he did in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. This is probably one of my personal top ten movie performances by a male actor. He just dives into the heart of darkness, and he never comes out.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Dan - you beat me to the Warren Oates character, he really holds down a buncha important roles in the movie and ends up the sad sack, the real-life Barney Fife in the real-life Mayberry.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Yeah, he was so good. Died way too young, too.
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  gerardjones

  1 year ago

  Love Oates. Would have no use for Alfredo Garcia without him, but he makes it compelling. Even interesting to watch in Chandler, which sucked.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Y'know, Gerard, one of the things I love about certain actors is how
  they can bring these epiphanies of brilliance to movies that aren't
  completely good, or in the case of Garcia, understandably not to
  everyone's taste. E.g., nearly every movie buff justifiably looks on
  Major Dundee as a flawed movie, but Oates's death scene is a classic
  -- we must give Peckinpah primary credit for that scene too of
  course, but, man, if the rest of the movie had been up to that level,
  it would be a masterpiece.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  I like Major Dundee a lot and don't have all that many reservations about it. Which seems to make me a special snowflake. :)
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  There was just something about the way Dundee wrapped up that didn't quite work. It was another one of those movies that went into production without a finished script. And that sort of thing never fails to amaze me. I remember the late great Sidney Pollack saying that he had never once gone into production with a finished script. There's something very weird about Hollywood.
  
  But then again, the final river-fight sequence in Dundee -- these wide shots with all these goddam riders coming off the far hilltop -- briilliant movie-making. And Charlton Heston rocked in that movie too. Heston was one of Peckinpah's short-listed actors for Pike Bishop in the Wild Bunch, and as great as William Holden was in that, I wonder how Heston would have fared? Just being Heston he might have added this whole scary dimension to the part.
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  HenryFTP

  1 year ago

  Dan:
  
  I always cite the final cavalry clash in the Rio Grande as an example of how modern "epic scale" films
  don't have the same artistry and craftsmanship for battles as did Peckinpah, Lean, Ford, Kubrick. Not only
  the sweep of that scene, but the grim humor and the pathos.
  
  As good as Heston is in Dundee (heck, was he ever better?), I just don't think he had the range
  Bill Holden brought to Pike Bishop. When he utters "let's go" before the climactic battle, you're ready
  to follow him straight to hell -- of course, the expression on Warren Oates's face before he replies,
  "why not?" makes the scene -- heck, could Samuel Beckett have asked for more?
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Henry, I'm so with you. Another crappy thing about contemporary epic
  scenes is they always go for the goddam CGI. Enough with that crap. I
  get it already, you can make anything happen, you can make ten
  thousand Mexican horsemen ride over that hill, but y'know what? For a
  lot less money and time you could hire a hundred extras and horses
  and make it real instead.
  
  Oh, right, and the expression on Holden's face as he gets dressed in
  the brothel, as he's making his decision to go back after Angel. The
  prostitutes. And, yeah, Oates's face after Holden's "Let's go."
  
  "Why not?"
  
  His last line in the movie. The Wild Bunch isn't a perfect movie, but
  that scene is perfect. They just don't make 'em like that any more.
  
  Another guy who was in line for Pike Bishop was Lee Marvin. He
  would've been great too, but Holden was perfection in that role.
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  HenryFTP

  1 year ago

  Dan:
  
  Sorry to be dangerously O/T here, but Marvin would have been great as Dutch Angstrom
  or as Deke Thornton, as memorable as both Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan were in
  those parts -- particularly as Thornton, since no one would have any trouble imagining Marvin
  as someone who used to ride with Pike Bishop and getting captured as depicted in the
  flashback.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  I love going off topic like this, and so did Holden Caulfield. I love
  how the lines in The Wild Bunch are so sparse, but they feel etched
  in stone.
  
  "You're not gettin' rid of anybody. We're gonna stick together, just
  like it used to be. When you side with a man you stay with him, and
  if you can't do that you're like some animal. You're finished. We're
  all finished. All of us. Mount up."
  
  Beautiful.
  
  I wish we could discuss The Wild Bunch or In Cold Blood or even The
  Professionals, or the Hustler or The Cincinnati Kid, or King Rat, or
  the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner instead of Guess Who's
  Coming to Dinner or, uh, Dr Dolittle.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Hey Dan - we can! This is newcritics, baby - discuss away. The Wild Bunch - so violent and watchable. What a cast of dissipated, over the hill actors strapping it on one more time. When I was a kid, it was everything I wasn't allowed to go and see in the movies.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  I'll start by saying that as great as Poitier's introductory shot is, and I agree with all you say about it, the mood of the picture is established even earlier with the great Ray Charles song that begins the film. Quincy Jones saw a rough cut of the movie and said the opening needed a "great blues song." So right from the first beat, with the out-of-focus shot of the train pulling in, you get a mood that's both menacing and mournful.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Menace - that to me is the key to the whole film and you're right, it starts right away. And you know, Ray Charles was a brilliant choice there because his voice carries 100 years of post-Civil War history in its edges, the whole historic back story is in that voice.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  And then something that fits with the "triumphalist" thing that Lance mentions, is the music that the white Southerners listen to, which is mostly AWFUL. "Foul Owl on the Prowl" -- my god, who wouldn't want to overcome that? It's deliberately bad, too, Jewison wanted the "source music" in the film to be something we hadn't heard before and to say something about the characters listening to it. If there's a worse song than "Foul Owl" in American movie history I don't know what it is.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Yeah, it's not like they had Waylon Jennings cranked up...here's the YouTube of that scene:
  Foul Owl
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  Just finished watching the YouTube clip...funny stuff...
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Evening all - a fine film, great company, lively talk - all beginning shortly. This is indeed my fave flick of the five, but more on that later. Lance will be along in a bit. And don't hesitate to sign up for the new comments system, it takes 10 seconds and it loads much, much faster than the old way...
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  Well, they had to frisk me at the front door...but I made it in. Evening all!
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Yeah, those rope lines can be tough - luckily you know the right people.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  Let me just get this out of the way...in a sane world, the Oscar winning Best Picture of 1967 would have been the non-nominated In Cold Blood. But of the five nominees, In the Heat of the Night was the correct and only choice.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Another Quincy Jones soundtrack ironically - Robert Blake freaked me out. But I really love In the Heat of the Night...
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  I've always thought the music in In the Heat of the Night ("Fowl Owl on the Prowl" and that uptempo one whose title escapes me at the moment) sounded a bit Roger MIller-ish.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Ivan, I am so glad to see you. Did you read the Harris book? He goes into the snubbing of In Cold Blood a bit. For my money, the winner should have been Bonnie & Clyde but that's not for another couple of weeks.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  I haven't read the Harris book though I keep meaning to...my preference for Blood is only because the movie had such a profound impact on me...even more so than Bonnie and Clyde, which I know is a bit hard to believe.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  I was a bit resistant to the book but it really is as good as its reviews. He not only has an eye for a telling anecdote and gives the book great narrative drive, but also is a real critic with a critic's insights. It's surprisingly rare to find movie books with both.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  I think the very first time I saw Heat was on television, and I remember that being odd only because my parents weren't bothered by the fact that I watched it with them. I guess they were banking on some of the "lessons" of the film settling in on me.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  A buddy of mine was such a big fan of Heat that he and his family made it an annual event, like The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Something else I wanted to mention, from Jewison's autobiography, has to do with Steiger's gum chewing. It was in the script and originally Steiger, always a very moody actor in that Method way, didn't want to do it. Jewison convinced him to stick with it for a couple of days of shooting. Steiger eventually realized that it was a way of signalling the cop's inner workings. If Gillespie was chewing steadily, his mind was settled. If he was thinking hard, he chewed faster. And if he stopped it means he had come to a conclusion and was letting it sink in.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  One of the things I've always admired about this film are the supporting actors, particularly Warren Oates and Scott Wilson. They're able to play Southern characters without resorting to stereotypes. (Of course, I'll watch anything Wilson is in, particularly the aforementioned In Cold Blood.)
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Oh definitely. I think one of the reasons the film holds up is that while most of the white characters are clearly racist, Jewison and Stirling and the actors refuse to turn everybody into some Southern gallery of gargoyles. As Renoir said, every man has his reasons and this film acknowledges that. It isn't as though we hadn't seen a white racist policeman before or that we wouldn't again, it's that Gillespie is a real man, neither wholly sympathetic nor repellent.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  One note on the costumes - Gillespie's are ill-fitting and some what goofy - especially that black number with those yellow shades - while Tibbs looks like he borrowed Cary Grant's number from NxNW...
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Steiger lived in his costumes while shooting and never came out of character. He was such a fiercely dedicated actor and so good when he had the right part. I wish he'd had more of a career.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Wow - I remember him as Napoleon, but the big roles were really thin given his immense talent.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Hey, Ivan, our thoughts crossed each other in transmission. And, yes, Scott Wilson -- what a pro. And last I noticed, he's still around.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  Dan, I caught Wilson in Clay Pigeons (1998) about a month ago, and if it hadn't been for him (and Janeane Garafalo) I probably would have never sat through it.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  I just checked, and, yep, our man Scott Wilson's still around. Damn he was good in In Cold Blood too, although I have never ever and never will be able to watch the murder scenes in that movie again. To this day I find them more horrifying than anything else I've ever seen in a movie. Maybe it's because not only are the victims human, but the actors play the killers as human.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  What makes In the Heat of the Night such a great film is that many of the character actors in the film (the ones that, when you see them on TV you say: "Hey! It's that guy!") have roles with so much meat on them that they deliver performances above and beyond their usual reliability. People like Larry Gates, William Schallert, Beah Richards, Jester Hairston--they're all tremendous.
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  Ivan_G

  1 year ago

  Good people, I have to run...thanks for inviting me, Campaspe, and I'll try my darndest to make sure I can stay a little longer next week.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Ivan - thanks for dropping in - you can always come back tomorrow and add some more...
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Thanks for stopping by, Ivan. And don't forget my main woman, Lee Grant, in that list of character actors. She was great too!
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Evening, folks.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  They call him Mr. Mannion....
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  By the way, I wonder if the film-makers knew how rough it would have been for Tibbs to make it to detective in Philly at that time? maybe not impossible, but very very rough. This was the era of Frank Rizzo ("I'm gonna make Attila the Hun look like a faggot") as police commissioner, and trust me, black people in this town did not think of the police as being black-friendly.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  You know, they had to film it in illinois - couldn't make the movie in Mississippi...good point on Philly, Dan - probably the same in many northern cities, Chicago, Boston etc....I'm just reading Nixonland, section on race riots.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Philadelphia always seemed like a strange choice for Tibbs place of employment to me too, Dan. I think it was chosen for symbolic reasons---City of Brotherly Love? Also for the play on Philadelphia, Mississippi, which someone, I forget who, assumes Virgil means when he says where he's from.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Tibbs was originally supposed to be from Pasadena (!!) but Stirling the screenwriter changed it to Philadelphia as just another way of emphasizing the story's divisions.
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  gerardjones

  1 year ago

  Pasadena?! Why the hell Pasadena? There were hardly any black people in Pasadena in the '60s, let alone black cops. And why would a detective from Pasadena represent sophistication and expertise? What crimes did they have in Pasadena? Pasadena in '67 represented little old ladies. Do you have any idea why anyone would conceive such a thing?
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  LOL, did something bad happen to you in Pasadena? I wonder if they did wanna avoid the Jan & Dean connection. But the Pasadena thing was in the novel the movie was based on.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Gillespie asks him that, yeah....
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  gerardjones

  1 year ago

  Both reasons were sort of the same, I think. The fact that Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman were murdered by the sheriff in the "City of Brotherly Love," Mississippi was a powerful irony that many people commented on at the time. Making Tibbs from Philly enabled them to evoke that while also getting a chuckle at the dumb Southerner's mistake. (I remember it being Gillespie himself.)
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Where Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign...
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  I still find that incredible. Or maybe not.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Quite the symbol for the beloved Ronnie...
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Campaspe,
  
  I just got your notes on Heat.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Oh dear.
  
  Better late than never?
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Yep. But I meant that I just got home. Your email arrived just after I left for the City. Thanks for them, though.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Mind if I get back to Warren Oates for a bit?
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Sam Wood must be one of the unluckiest men in Sparta.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  But I liked the way Oates managed to divide the man's loyalties three ways.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  He's the first character in the movie to recognize there's something special about Tibbs.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  So he's officially loyal to the chief, professionally loyal to Tibbs. But his loyalty to that girl trumps both and it's what gets him into trouble.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  In the novel (which I haven't read) Wood is the narrator and Gillespie is a much smaller character.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  But it all fits together in the end. The movie starts with a sketch of this small southern town and it turns out that the murder, which Tibbs and Gillespie and the mayor are all assuming must have all these large scale implications, is just that small town's smallness closing in on itself.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Wood is an obedient and dutiful officer, the only one Gillespie has apparently, which is why it's so weird to me when Gillespie is so certain of his guilt.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  It's also quite poignant because Wood is clearly something of a surrogate son for the very lonely Gillespie.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Don't you think Steiger plays Gillespie as a man who isn't comfortable liking anybody?
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Oh yes. An Ethan Edwards in The Searchers type. Longing for human contact and yet unable to go after it or know what to do if it comes after him.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  The scene between Gillespie and Tibbs in which they just talk about their lives is painful---because Steiger makes you feel how much it hurts Gillespie to talk like this about himself to anyone, let alone a black stranger.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  That's definitely my favorite scene in the movie. Poitier plays it beautifully too, his reaction when Gillespie turns on him like that. It says so much about the difficulty of reaching across lines.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  Off-topic, but of interest since it's our first night using it - how's the new comment system working out?
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  It's much better I think. The old system was like watching the gears in a grandfather clock. Enter, chug, chug chug ...
  
  this is pretty fast and easier to read, too.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  It's definitely quicker. I wonder what people coming into the threat later are going to make of all the jumping around though?
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  The threaded part - plus it seems to change the order based on latest comments. I need to play around with it.
  I love the speed and the ability to go in an edit your comment post-typo!
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  I can see some lurkers here - c'mon folks, sign on in! I'm gonna have to bow out for now....
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  From C's notes to me: Sidney Poitier taking another tack altogether from Lilies of the Field. Aside from the famous slap, it's one of the few movies where he shows human frailty, wanting the plantation owner to be guilty and almost missing the real culprit because of it
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Yep. Tibbs makes several big mistakes, mostly because he lets his own ego get the better of him.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  Ego, and anger. even though it's justified anger it still has to be worked past to reach a conclusion. Which is a pretty obvious metaphor.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  I can't think of another movie that has two such prickly and hard to like leads.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Poitier took a big risk with the part. Tibbs is as resistant to liking anyone in Sparta as they are to liking him. He pushes away sympathy and ignores or rejects attempts by the other characters to befriend him. It's because he suspects they will only be his friend on THEIR terms, which is to say on racist terms. But it makes Tibbs seem rude at times and overly proud and that makes him difficult for the audience to like the way audiences are used to liking movie heroes, and the way they were used to liking Poitier.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Hey, ya know what, maybe the film-makers really did know about the cop/race thing in Philly, and one reason they made that choice was just because Tibbs would have had to be one extremely tough guy to make detective in this town at that time. On Rizzo's force he would have had to be four times as good as anyone else on his squad just to hold his own. The man should have been a nervous wreck.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  C,
  
  It looks like it's down to you and me. Might be time to call it a night. But before we do I've got to mention a few things that bug me about the movie.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  I was just about to turn in as well. But do tell, and I'll respond either now or tomorrow.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  The movie's called In The Heat of the Night but it's quite obviously not at all warm there in Sparta. The calenders all say it's September, so that part of Mississippi's meant to be experiencing a late summer heat wave, but the trees all say it's November or March. The sky's a wintery sky too. Makes me wish they'd just filmed the movie in California.
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  jcloophole

  1 year ago

  During the day the weather seems to be somewhat bluster (Gillespie zips up his coat, etc.) but in the evening it's warm- you can see Sam Wood sweating at the diner- the Chief seems to be more concerned about the air conditioner at night. In the south for a long tiem there were many sundown towns- If you were black, you couldn't be on the street or even in town after sundown, or the heat (police) would be out actively running you in or running you out- so In the Heat of the Night could have several meanings.
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  And I'd like to get my hands on whoever cast Gilligan's psychotic brother as the counterman in the diner
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  And last but not least. Why is Sparta is the only town in the South with no assertive adult female citizens?
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  They should've brought in Tennessee Williams to do that final rewrite.
  
  Nighty night, guys! ( I'll check in tomorrow.)
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  Mannion

  1 year ago

  Goodnight, C. Goodnight, Dan. Good times, good times. Good night, lurkers. Thanks for stopping by.
  
  And to anyone happening by tonight, tomorrow, next week, or whenever, the thread's still open, feel free to add your thoughts.
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  Kevin Wolf

  1 year ago

  Sorry, much later to the party than expected, but I've not much to add. I will say the "slap" scene, which was mentioned up front but seemed to take time to gain traction in the comments, is the most memorable scene for me. I think as a a kid it was the sheer force of it that hit me, on top of the historical movie trope of slapping, typically guy-on-gal (meant to be funny, oftentimes, when perhaps it was not) yet used here as one man's reaction to another -- and additionally of course the black man slapping the white man. Holy cow, you expected the world to come apart after that. Movie-wise, anyway.
  
  Another very vague thought here re cinematography: I never personally experienced this movie as black and white in fact (as on TV) or in memory, but I can see it as a color update of noir. I think there were a lot of movies trying for that, especially in the years immediately following this film. I'd have to think about this, but the "look" to me reminds me some of, say, Harper. (On the other hand, soon the noir movie ideal was bleached out in movies like Altman's The Long Goodbye. Yet he had made Thieves Like Us.) Just thinking out loud here. Plus I haven't seen most of these damn movies in a long time.
  
  Good night.
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  HenryFTP

  1 year ago

  The foliage and the daylight aren't right, but the rest of the production design, together with Wexler's cinematography, captures the rural South about as well as any film -- I was in Corinth, Mississippi not long ago, and my first thought was of In the Heat of the Night, particularly because Corinth hasn't yet been blighted by chains, franchises and casinos.
  
  The film doesn't have the significance in film history that Bonnie & Clyde has or the cultural iconic status of The Graduate, but it is far superior to both films as a social artefact -- it would be difficult to name another film that captures the tension of the South in the immediate post-Civil Rights Act era -- a tension that was actually pervasive in the country, but so much more palpable in the South, where an Endicott's hatred could be so visible beneath the thinnest of veneers of civility.
  
  As great as the ensemble performances are in the film, and as good as Rod Steiger is, it really all hinges on Poitier. The John Ball character is no Philip Marlowe -- Poitier brings to life what Ball only hints at, and that's the Jackie Robinson dimension to Virgil Tibbs. All that competitive drive, intelligence and ambition is straitjacketed by societal strictures, and Poitier has to battle the bigots and himself all the way through the film. It works both as a terrific piece of acting and as a real movie star turn -- he grabs you from the opening frames.
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  tomwatson

  1 year ago

  It was so palpable in the south, that they had to film it in Illinois for fear of violence - hence, the cold backgrounds - indeed, you can see frosty breath in several scenes.
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  Campaspe

  1 year ago

  The interiors and buildings look pretty good and have the proper feel. The landscapes don't look very Southern to me except the cotton fields, which were shot in Tennessee and gave the company no end of fright in filming, as Harris talks about. But while watching the movie I have no problem accepting it as a Southern milieu and I think that also comes down to Wexler.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Tom, in reply to your most recent comment: I wish I had the time right now to really let loose with a good long post on The Wild Bunch. As I said before somewhere up above, to me it's not a perfect movie, but it has, to my mind, at least six or seven scenes that are great, which is three or four scenes more than what Howard Hawks said you had to have to make a good movie.
  
  To me the 60s were a real golden age of movie-making, but a lot of my favorites didn't make much of an impact at the Oscars. You had the tail-end of studio-system big-budget over-lit Hollywood studio fim-making, but you had the French New wave, the real heyday of Italian film-making (Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Germi, et al), the one-man genre known as Bergman, an onslaught of great British films (Richardson, Reisz, Anderson, Schlesinger, Richard Lester (from Philadelphia originally), Bryan Forbes; and in America the last years when film makers could make movies in black-and-white just because they knew the material (usually adult drama) would be better in black-and-white (Hud, the Hustler, In Cold Blood, etc.). And the 60s were also so rich in the sort of demotic "outsider' film-making that I love: the biker and horror and LSD movies from the Roger Corman factory, all those dozens of fabulous spaghetti westerns, all the great trashy James Bond rip-offs (not to mention the trashy great Bond films themselves), the bizarre yakuza movies of Suzuki, all the classic Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman movies. What a decade of riches. The year we've been discussing in this series was definitely a sort of watershed year, at least for mainstream American film-making, but there was already this great movement in cinema going on worldwide. A movement now sadly dead and gone.
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  LanceMannion

  1 year ago

  Dan, that wasn't a comment, that was a cry to be allowed to host a Wednesday Night at the Movies series or two...or three...or four. What do you say?
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  Ah, thanks, Lance. I'm honored. Maybe after this current series.
  Maybe some of these cool downbeat, black-and-white 60s movies, like
  Hud, the Hustler, or King Rat. Or it might be fun to take as a theme
  a great actor or actress: like, say, the first four or five films of
  a Montgomery Clift, or Brando, or the three James Dean movies. I
  recently watched Red River for the first time in a long time, and
  Clift was so good in that, his first movie. Or you could do a series
  on Howard Hawks, or Godard, or Fellini, or Jean-Pierre Melville...As
  long as it's not, like, the films of Michael Bay.
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  jcloophole

  1 year ago

  Sorry for coming late to the party, but I just wanted to add one observation on the film in general. The Introduction to Film Studies class that I teach is usually filled with quite a few new comers to "classic cinema". Most, I would venture to say, have never seen a film older than they are when they first come to class.
  In the Heat of the Night is either the first or second film that they see with me in class- always. It is a wonderful film to bring them into something outside of their comfort zone, but is easy for them to get into and relate to in some way. Whether it's Quincy Jones' score, the mystery, the racial tension and most definitely the acting- they all (without exception) get hooked on the film. If I had a commission for every DVD of the film bought after the class- I'd have a nice chunk of change.
  I have begun to require a reaction paper on this film, and so far the results have been interesting. I always hear how they knew it was a tv show but had no idea it was an "awesome movie". I could easily break the film down into all of the individual components and identify what really pulls different people in, but the truth is the fact that all of it's parts are firing on all pistons so the whole film just draws you in. Then you go back to watch again for the individual components. In the Heat of the Night is the majority top pick for favorite film watched in class at the end of the semester as well. And I try to introduce them to many classics- and they have many favorites. I just think "Heat" hits them early on and hits them hard.
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