Talkin' Old Classic
Movies
by Tarjei
Straume
Rod Steiger
(1925-2002), an admirably
talented actor, gave a "Hardtalk" interview on BBC to Tim Sebastian -
it must have been the last year he lived - and he said that when they
were
shooting "In the Heat of the Night" in the South, he saw with his own
eyes how frightening racial prejudice was. It was all around them while
they
were shooting the film!
"When old
actors come up to me and
say, 'I don't know if I should do this Role. It might be bad for my
image.' I
say, 'That's tough that you only have one image. My heart bleeds for
you!' We
are supposed to create raw people, explore life and communicate at the
highest
level; be it pain, joy or what have you. That's what I believe. I guess
you
could say it does become a philosophy's way of life." - Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger!
Unforgettable ever since that
famous taxicab scene with Marlon Brando (who just passed away July 2 at
age 80)
in "On the Waterfront" in 1954. He pulls a gun on his brother, who
reacts not with outrage or fear, but with a wave of compassion.
I remember
an episode from the 1970's TV
series "Starsky and Hutch", where Steiger played a serial killer
stalking cab drivers. Shit, in this episode of an ordinary TV series -
although
Aaron Spelling, still around at 82, and still WORKING, producing
"Bounty
Hunters" [2004], is an EXTRAordinary TV producer - Steiger displayed an
incredible range as an artist, because the serial killer was an actor
whose
career had been marooned when a taxicab injured his leg. So every night
when he
was going out for another murderous cabbie-stalk, he dressed up, donned
his
makeup and told his old father he was preparing to play a role on
stage, in a
theater. Hard to catch a serial killer with so many disguises, so many
voices
and accents, of both genders!
As Police
Chief Bill Gillespie in "In
the Heat of the Night" (1967), Steiger gives a subtle portrait of a
frustrated, prejudiced, poor, not-too-smart lawman, a victim of his own
culture
who, underneath his unpleasant exterior and bad mouth, has a heart of
gold.
He's good, not because he wants to be, but because he can't help
himself. He
sticks to his prejudice against "niggers" throughout the story, like
glue, but he develops affection for Detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney
Poitier) as
a human being, and in fact recognizes him as an equal. And we see how
difficult
this is for Gillespie. As a masterful artist, Steiger invites us to
witness his
struggle.
No wonder he
won the Academy Award for
this one. No wonder the movie won five Academy Awards.
For
Gillespie, the chief problem is that
he has met his match in a Negro, a cop from Philadelphia who is smarter
than
he, with brains and know-how to solve a case nobody else can figure
out. This
infuriates Gillespie, who keeps growling at Tibbs that "niggers" must
stop thinking they're smarter than white folks. What he holds against
Tibbs is
not his blackness, nor is it his smartness, but he being smart and
black at
the same time. He has a problem with racial equality in the sense that
if Tibbs
isn't inferior because of his complexion, he has to be superior because
of his
brains. Meeting Tibbs is threatening to turn the Southern Police
Chief's world
upside down, with smart blacks on top calling the shots and
not-so-smart whites
at the bottom taking orders.
"You're so
damn smart! You're smarter
than any white man. You're just going to stay here and show us all. You
got
such a big head that you could never live with yourself unless you
could put us
all to shame...I don't think you could let an opportunity like that
pass
by."
Tibbs seems
to understand his partner's
dilemma with guarded compassion, so he lets him vent his outbursts
without
talking back to him. He learns to recognize that in spite of their
confrontational introduction, this guy is the best friend he's ever
had, and in
the fictional town portrayed, his only
ally in a dangerously hostile environment.
There's a
well-known scene in this film
when Gillespie and Tibbs visit an elderly plantation owner during the
course of
their investigation: The old white man slaps Tibbs across the cheek,
and Tibbs
slaps him right back. The old man asks Gillespie what he is going to do
about
it. Gillespie replies thoughtfully, "I don't know", but you can see
what he's thinking: Nothing whatsoever, but to calm your nerves and
protect my
own ass at the same time, I'll let you think I'll punish him later for
something that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't asked for it.
These are
the thoughts that seem to run
through Gillespie's mind, because through his artistic craft, Rod
Steiger is
telling us that his affection and respect for Tibbs is evolving
underneath his
grumbling protests, and this slap-back shows a man who'll stick up for
his
dignity and die with his boots on if need be, just like any man with self-respect.
Whether or
not Virgil Tibbs understands
the severe danger he is exposing himself to in a town like this remains
an open
question. Gillespie suspects that he is not
sufficiently aware of it; nor does Tibbs seem to be aware that by
protecting
him Gillespie is jeopardizing his own job, but he can't help himself.
His
heart gives him no choice.
So when the
chips are down, Gillespie take
Tibbs home, hiding him from the mob in his very humble lair where he is
safe
because "nobody ever comes here" as he says bitterly, sneering at his
companion because "niggers" think they're smarter than white folks.
Gillespie:
"You know, you know
Virgil, you are among the chosen few."
Virgil:
"How's that?"
Gillespie:
"Well I think that you're
the first human being that's ever been in here."
Virgil: "You
can't be too careful,
man."
Gillespie:
".....I got no wife. I got
no kids. Boy...I got a town that don't want me...I'll tell you a
secret. Nobody
comes here, never."
So Gillespie
sticks to his prejudice,
which is torturing him, because he has recognized Virgil Tibbs' I AM
almost
from the start, seeing him as an equal, a buddy rather than a
competitor. We,
the audience, don't realize this until Gillespie gets the last line in
the film.
He follows Tibbs to the train station, and when he boards the train, he
calls
to him and smiles, radiantly, for the first time:
"You take
care, y'hear?"
At this
point, the unlikely friendship
between the two men is complete. "In the Heat of the Night" is not
only an interesting thriller and cultural portrait; it's also a deeply
moving
story about a relationship.
Sidney
Poitier! My childhood hero. I've
never seen him in the role of a villain or a bad guy; he was always the
morally
upright, dignified heroic leading man. But it took twenty years of such
straight leading film roles for Poitier and a few others like Jim Brown
before
Afro-American actors were free to play leading roles of all kinds just
like
white actors had always done. White audiences had to become acquainted
with
black characters they could trust as much as they'd trusted John Wayne
and
Clark Gable. That was the mission of Poitier's career.
Jim Brown,
though always heroic and
sympathetic, was the football warrior type (in war action movies), but
Sidney
Poitier was the intellectual, the thinker. There's a scene in another
1967
movie, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Tracy and Hepburn's last
collaboration - the plot revolves around a salt-and-pepper marriage
being hard
to swallow for the in-laws to be, the hardest of all to persuade is
Sidney's
dad, and the unforgettable line with the two of them alone runs
approximately
(from memory):
"The
difference between you and me,
dad, is that you've always been a black man, but I'm just a man."
Powerful.
The story takes place in
California, in wealthy, upper middle class white suburbia. It's
tempting to
swallow this story raw, for sentimental, romantic, tear-jerking
reasons. Until
you read what James Baldwin had to say about it.
James
Baldwin! Another thinker, and a keen
observer too, whose skepticism and irony knocks you right out of your
chair. As
you probably know, the Afro-American novelist, essayist, playwright and
civil
rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) lived in Paris, and when
"Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner" hit the movie theaters, his friends were
anxious
to have him see it. He didn't want to; he thought the plot sounded
plain
stupid. But his friends kept insisting, so he went, and proved himself
right.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, here's the bottom line in this plot,
discovered
by the keen
Baldwin:
IT'S OK AS
LONG AS YOU GET OUT OF TOWN!
Yep, that's
exactly what happens. They're
even getting out of the COUNTRY, so their in-laws will rarely if ever
be
embarrassed by their presence. Did you ever think of that, those of you
who've
seen that flick? That's what I love about Baldwin; he had such an
astute eye
for "little details". Sentimental tear jerking makes you buy the
bullshit. But look, in this role, Sidney has that huuuuge pile of
university
degrees and awards, he's been doing soooo much wonderful work for "his
people" in Africa, and he's such a prude he won't even grant his
fianc�e a
screw before their wedding day even when she's begging for it! - thus
giving
the bourgeois white audiences what the screenwriter thinks they need
when the
girl's Catherine Hepburn-mom wants to know if they've been intimate,
and the
daughter replies, literally with her nose up in the air: "He
wouldn't."
Oh gimme a
break. And thank you, James
Baldwin.
In my view,
there's a difference between
the two movies we're talking about. "In the Heat of the Night" was
brilliant; that's why it won five Oscars. "Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner" was flawed. I'll come back to that and explain.
What the two
movies had in common -
besides starring Sidney Poitier and being made in 1967, when the Civil
Rights
struggle was becoming victorious, the San Francisco hippies celebrated
their
Summer of Love, and Martin Luther King changed his focus to demand an
end to
the Vietnam War - is that they marked a goodbye to the Jim Crow laws
and the
crumbling of the Race Wall and the so-called "color barrier".
"In the Heat of the Night" shows an Old South doomed to final defeat
due to moral bankruptcy.
In a sense,
we're talking about a
follow-up to the nearly four hours long 1939 movie, "Gone With the
Wind," with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. The title of Margaret
Mitchell's
1936 novel meant that the Old South was swept away and gone with the
wind
forever through the Civil War, but that's not the focus of the story.
Instead,
we're witnessing a personal soap opera with two ill-fated and
intertwined love
triangles, ending with the accidental death of a little girl and a
rather
non-Hollywoodish unhappy ending, with an exchange that has perhaps
become the
most famous line in cinematic history:
Scarlett:
"Rhett, Rhett... Rhett, if
you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?"
Rhett:
"Frankly, my dear, I don't
give a damn."
"Gone with
the Wind" (tagline:
"The most magnificent picture ever!") - the movie that became a cult
- won a whooping eight Oscars. Among the winners was the unforgettable
Hattie
McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett's Rock of Gibraltar, who delivered the
strongest
performance as a slave and later a servant. Hattie's Mammy dishes out
wisdom a
mile a minute, but Scarlett tries her best to ignore it. Hattie, with a
film
resume a hundred miles long starting in 1934, deservedly won the best
supporting actress that year, the first Afro-American to receive such
an honor.
Ironically, Georgia segregation laws banned her from attending opening
night in
an Atlanta theater.
"Gone With
the Wind" is not a
story about the Civil War; it's a close-up of people tangled up in
intrigues of
the heart. Historical events and action drama, the Siege of Atlanta and
the
restoration and all that, this is only the backdrop, not the central
theme. The
same is the case with "In the Heat of the Night". History can be
learned from books and documentaries. Historical fiction, on the other
hand,
must deliver personal close-ups to achieve its goal. "In the Heat of
the
Night", the murder investigation is the backdrop, and even when Tibbs
is
running for his life from a dangerous mob, the focus is upon Gillespie
coming
to his rescue: "OK, you've had your fun. Now go home."
So why do I
think "Guess Who's Coming
to Dinner?" is flawed compared to the two others, beyond James
Baldwin's
observations? In the first place, there's no racy, fast-moving backdrop
in this
film. No action whatsoever. Secondly, there are no intrigues of the
heart
between the characters. Their individual struggles have nothing to do
with
their personal interrelationships, but only with prejudice against
interracial
marriage. The cast and the directing are beyond reproach; major
superstars Katherine Hepburn
and Spencer Tracey get the
opportunity to champion a
cause
they believe in, in a manner they obviously enjoy. There is melodrama
without a
plot; the story doesn't have any meat, and besides, as Baldwin pointed
out,
they're getting out of town and out of the country to make the union
more
palatable to skeptical white audiences.
In spite of
these flaws, "Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner?" is an important movie. How do we look at the
backdrops
of these films almost four decades later? Once again, in "In the Heat
of
the Night", we're looking at an Old South of a later date that's gone
with
the wind - not through a few years of war, but through a combination of
socio-political battles and spiritual evolution. Today, upper middle
class Afro-Americans
are moving to the South, and people of all colors are receiving them
with open
arms. They're computer engineers, academics, and other professionals.
The Old
South didn't evaporate with the Civil War; it merely shifted gear into
the Jim
Crow system of racial segregation with whites on top and blacks below,
enforced
from time to time by the unspeakable terror of the KKK. Today, the
remaining
racists have for the most part been chased into the woods, where some
of them
have private armies dreaming of reviving the Southern rebellion against
the
Union, or they're behind bars in various federal institutions.
Of course
there are still problems, especially among the poor. And
Southerners are often more suspicious of strangers than folks in other
parts of the U.S. The observation I describe is based upon a piece made
relatively recently by Mike Wallace for "60 Minutes," where he
interviewed upper middle class blacks having moved to the South. It
should be recognized that this is also a part of the picture,
which is complicated. Whether or not you're a racist is no longer
related to whether you're a Southerner or Northerner or Westerner;
that's the point. And that's the accomplishment of the past 40
years, which makes the South significantly different from what it was
when the films described above were made.
Do movies
influence social evolution, or do they merely portray it? The Answer is
both.
� 2004 Tarjei Straume
http://uncletaz.com
