In the Heat of the Night

A wealthy businessman from Chicago was found murdered on an empty street in Sparta, Mississippi (where he intended to build a factory) In the Heat of the Night in 1967.  Who done it?  A black man "wearing white man's clothes" found waiting at the train depot?  A local young man trying to escape over a bridge into Arkansas with the dead man's wallet?  A Sparta policeman who deposited an unsubstantiated large sum into his bank account?   A cotton plantation owner "least likely to mourn" the passing of the murder victim?  Or was it somebody else?  It was somebody else.

In the Heat of the Night won 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture (Walter Mirish, producer), Best Actor (Rod Steiger) and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Sterling Silliphant).  I should also mention another actor, Sidney Poitier, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1963 film Lillies of the Field.  

Similar to A Naked City (September 2, 2018 post), In the Heat of the Night is a police drama murder investigation.  But on a deeper level it is about racism laid bare in a small Mississippi town in the 1960s.  

There is an attitude among the white population there, even those below the poverty line, that at least they are better than a black.  Thus, there is a reluctance to accept the help of a northern black homicide expert to the point of irrationality. "Who is this boy?" and "I don't need you."     

The local Chief of Police (Steiger) has an additional problem.  Newly hired to his job and a community outsider (although a Southerner), he needs to solve the murder to prove his metal to the Sparta town fathers.  

Thus, Gillespie, the Chief of Police, is forced to virtually beg Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), the northern black homicide expert, to assist him in finding the murderer.  On the other hand, Tibbs can't resist the opportunity to prove a black can outsmart his white counterparts.  He also is not above his own racism in trying to prove the white cotton plantation owner is the guilty party.  He isn't.  

In the end, Tibbs and Gillespie, each getting what they hoped for in solving the case and catching the murderer (Ralph), develop a mutual respect (and friendship?), not that they will ever work together again.  Tibbs happily returns home to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi.