The PAD Awards: 1960s

Our 1960s films, flanked by candlelight. (The Sound of Music is currently on loan to friends & made its apologies)

At the end of another decade, it's time for our decade-regular PAD (Paul and Doug) awards. So without first ado, our first award...

Least Favourite Film 

Paul says: My Fair Lady

I have, for the first time, done a “Douglas”. I have picked a least favourite film that DIDN’T have the lowest mark of the decade! Please save all gasps for the end of this paragraph. It would have been so easy to lambast Tom Jones’ lack of focus and Carry-On imitations. But I thought it would be deliciously controversial in a decade that has proven to be our most successful statistically to pick My Fair Lady. This is a film that promises a lot. It is one of the most successful stage and movie musicals of all time, and comes with a high regard even compared to its counterparts in the Golden Age of Movie Musicals. But for me, it’s too static, too slow, and too soulless. I’ve never been involved in whether Eliza Doolittle manages to enter high society or rebel against it, and I’ve always been unnerved by the romance between her and the snarky monster that is Dr Henry Higgins. Not one that has stood the test of time for me - but I know I’m in a lowly minority.

Doug says: Tom Jones

This was an appalling mess of a film - more ‘Carry On’ than ‘Academy Award Winning’ . Tom Jones rolls around having wild sexual adventures, and despite the interesting stylistic choices (exposition directly to camera, characters breaking the fourth wall), it had an amateurish tone that felt weird and irritating. Edith Evans valiantly did her best, but even her excellent turn couldn’t save this turkey of a film. (Dis)honourable mention also goes to In The Heat of the Night - a distinctly underwhelming winner. This wasn’t a decade of failures, but there were certainly a couple of flops. Tom Jones has been one of the forgotten winners - and with good reason. 

Favourite Male Performance 

Paul says: Paul Schofield in A Man For All Seasons

There’s no other contender to be honest, although George Chakiris, Peter O’Toole, Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Dustin Hoffman were memorable contenders in a surprisingly male-heavy decade. The beauty of Schofield is his minimalism. In fact, he doesn’t need to do much. The man is naturally a brutalist statue- imposing, gravel-voiced, slow-moving, unshakeable, with just the right streak of vulnerability. His opening scene with Orson Welles as an insecure Wolesley suggests smugness, comfort but caution. His stillness and vocal authority during his interrogation scenes in which he refuses to conform to his King’s demands project an image of an immoveable boulder. And his final goodbye scene with his family sees him crumble like we all do when we have stayed strong for too long - with suddenness and a total lack of control. The performance is a work of art.

Doug says: Ron Moody in Oliver!

Unusually - for me - I was torn between a few different performances for this. You have Paul Schofield and Robert Shaw in A Man For All Seasons as Thomas More and Henry VIII respectively. You also have Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy as the rat-like Rizzo, not forgetting Alec Guinness in Lawrence of Arabia. All these were stellar performances, and a sign that male actors were breaking free of the dull upright roles and creating interesting, twisted characters. But for me Ron Moody’s tour de force as the thieving, dark-hearted Fagin wins this one. It’s a performance that reveals layer after layer, and despite being the heart of a cheery musical, Moody gives us darkness and a bleakness underneath the overt friendliness. A fantastic and note-worthy turn. 

Favourite Female Performance 

Paul says: Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music

You didn’t think I’d get through a whole 90 years’ worth of Oscars films and NOT give Julie a whole paragraph, did you?! It’s hard to turn saccharine into spontaneity but that’s just what Julie built her career on (and yes, I call her Julie like a know her. Sue me). She’s so endearing that you can’t help feeling a sharp streak of hatred for those Von Trapp children who get her as a stepmother. The Von Trapp’s moan about their home and country being invaded by an army of racist human rights abusers, but they should count their blessings that Captain Von Trapp didn’t employ Lady Tremaine as their new governess. Julie leaps and bounds through the film with an unparalleled, infectious energy- and after her marriage to the Captain she credibly transforms into a dignified but warm-hearted head of the household. No one else could have done it (not even me…..ok, maybe me).  

Doug says: Joan Shawlee in The Apartment

Whereas this was a great year for the men, it wasn’t quite so fantastic for the women. Although we have some star turns - Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, Rita Moreno in West Side Story, the films felt more focused on the men, and the issues of the day - racism in In The Heat of the Night, poverty (and more) in Midnight Cowboy, and sex in general in Tom Jones. My runner up has to be the wonderful Wendy Hiller for her role as Thomas More’s wife Alice in A Man for All Seasons, but my winner, with about five minutes of screen-time, is Joan Shawlee in The Apartment. It's such a small role from an unknown actor that I couldn't even find a photo for this award! She plays the tiny role of a character’s mistress, but bounds through it with a mixture of joie-de-vivre and comic timing, to the extent that I keep recalling her performance over three months later. Best remembered for her line ‘either you get a bigger car or a smaller girl’, she reinforces the adage that there are no small parts, only small actors. Brava. 

Favourite Film 

Doug says: The Sound of Music

There’s only one. Oh you can throw all the artsy new-wave films (Midnight Cowboy), issue-packed pieces (In The Heat of the Night) and novel adaptations (Tom Jones) at me that you want, nothing quite beats a bunch of nuns, a stoic governess and a race to beat the Nazis. The Sound of Music has delivered all through childhood, and continues to deliver today. Whether it’s watching Maria teach the children about experiencing joy in everyday life, or watching the final tense scenes as they flee the Nazis, this masterpiece never shies away from darkness, while always reminding us that what matters in life is love, friendship and refusing to give up in the face of absolute evil. And if you have a bunch of nuns and a Mother Superior cheering you on tunefully, then so much the better. 

Paul says: Oliver!

Surprise! The gays both chose musicals! Didn’t see that one coming, eh? Actually, my biggest surprise was not choosing The Sound of Music. I commenced the '60s certain that I had pre-chosen my favourite film already. But after years of simply not owning the DVD, a re-viewing of Oliver! proved me wrong. I loved remembering the hints of terror and blatant abuse mixed in with jolly chorus numbers involving more extras than Ben-Hur. The big numbers, in fact, are so intricate that they need to be seen to be believed. Each group of extras are given some kind of Victorian occupation and a dance routine to match it (the butchers are dancing with legs of lamb, the window cleaners are dancing with ladders, blah blah) and each group’s choreography blends in with the others’ to create a party bigger than Glastonbury. But the film handles the little numbers- Nancy’s croaky-voiced “As Long As He Needs Me”, Oliver’s super-dubbed “Where is Love?” and Fagin’s hilariously nihilistic “Reviewing the Situation”. Every song is not only catchy but has it’s own unique sound. Fagin’s numbers have a Fiddler on the Roof quality (perhaps the closest the writers dared come to his character’s religion), Nancy’s numbers have come right out of a music hall, and the short “Boy for Sale” is pure opera. It’s a film with variety, panache, and power. And I want to see it again RIGHT NOW. 

Average Film Scores 

Paul: 6.8

Doug: 6.85

42. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Plot Intro

Young, handsome Texan Joe Buck (Jon Voight) travels to New York City to seek his fortune as a male prostitute. He befriends a street-smart layabout, Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), and the two try attempt to make their way in the grimy, unpredictable metropolis.

Doug says...

Well it’s been a decade filled with a wide variety of films, from musicals (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Oliver!) to soaring epics such as Lawrence of Arabia and A Man For All Seasons. All this makes the fact that the 1960s ends with Midnight Cowboy even more extraordinary.

Because this is a film of a new era. There’s male and female nudity, frequent blunt depictions of sex (both straight and gay) and overall the depiction of a grimy, unromantic New York that feels akin to more modern films like Se7en. Our hero Joe Buck is a fresh-faced handsome country boy who has set his heart on coming to New York - to make his fortune as a rent boy. My Fair Lady it ain’t. 

It’s also fascinating for the sheer depths we see him plumb to. He uncomfortably lets a man perform oral sex on him, he lives in a condemned building with his friend Rico (Dustin Hoffman delivering a performance where you can actually feel the dirt and grime on his skin and clothes), and his disillusionment & violent streak gets worse and worse. 

And it’s not just him who suffers. Everyone in the city is bizarre - from a woman who appears to be high on acid that ecstatically moves a toy mouse over her own face, to the revellers at a strange ‘art’ party who silently film each other and speak in monotones. But Joe Buck has a past, hinted at through black and white grainy memories, that speak of his girlfriend and himself being caught having sex and being attacked by gangs. It’s never made clear what happened, and the nightmarish quality of these memories mean you never believe quite what you’re seeing. 

The film’s techniques are fresh - and reminiscent of Citizen Kane in its unexpected modern take. Camera angles are used to their best effect, scenes are shot in black and white, colour, grainy textures, and director John Schlesinger manages to convey the dirt and grime of these situations. New York rarely seems so unglamorous and lonely, as when Joe hangs about outside cinemas, hoping that this time he’ll meet a rich woman ready to make him her lover. 

Ultimately, it’s not a film that has much of a plot, bearing real similarity to slow-burning character studies like Withnail & I. Boasting two excellent central performances, and subject matters that are refreshingly modern and open in comparison to the coy references of the early ‘60s and before, this is a film harkening a new hero. 

Highlight 

Dustin Hoffman bursts on to the screen as Ratso Rizzo, and delivers a compelling, provocative performance that ends up stealing the whole film. 

Lowlight

It feels a little long at times, considering there’s minimal plot, and I ended up with a strange emptiness, as if there’d been a message that hadn’t quite been delivered.  

Mark 

7/10 

Paul says...

It’s true, of all the decades we have seen the biggest changes in subject matter during the 1960s. We started with coy sex comedy, The Apartment and have ended with a film that literally has Jon Voight buttock-naked in the shower. 

This is an obvious reflection on the sweeping social change throughout the decade, but what Midnight Cowboy does very well is that, on its own, it creates a unique and memorable image of America. In New York City, Joe Buck comes across people ignoring, dismissing and mocking him. And the first woman that does eventually hire his physical services manages to convince him that she had no idea he was a gigolo. Rizzo himself is so permanently covered in grime and lives in the most abject squalor that he would fit in well with the sewer wildlife. He even moves like a rat with his bustling limp and twitchy eye. In this New York City, there are no endless opportunities- you’re either rich and uppity, or poor and resorting to petty crime to get by. Complete with the despondent harmonica-based score and the blink-and-you-miss-them peace protests in the background, this is, in short, the jaded Vietnam-era America as seen through the eyes of the pacifist Liberal. 

The surrealist aspect of the film is refreshing too. There are several fast-paced montages at times of intensity that combine several strands of thought. When Joe flees a bonkers pimp whom he was recommended to by Rizzo, he runs for the subway whilst at the same time recalling images of what I think is the kidnap and rape of his girlfriend in Texas (this is never fully explained), sees images of what he is actually doing, images of himself managing to track down Rizzo and strangle him in revenge, and images of himself failing to track down Rizzo. I’ve never been a fan of art-house-style film-making but segments like that display a character’s past, present, what they want to do and what they are worried about, without the use of lengthy exposition. We see similar montages throughout that provide some insight into Joe’s relationship with his Grandmother, who appears to have raised him.

“Some” insight, however, is the key phrase here. The film promised me some explanation for these frantic, ethereal internal thoughts and memories. It’s obvious that some are true and some are false because they conflict with each other, but I was looking forward to a revisitation to Joe’s past that would clarify why he has this desperate-to-please attitude to life and why he can’t or won’t amount to anything other than a sex worker. He could have explained some the clues about his character later on (he has a good listener in the form of Rizzo), or his later actions could have related back to these flashbacks. Neither occurs. And, as a result, I felt no real investment in his character. Dustin Hoffman’s Rizzo is more watchable because Hoffman transforms as magnificently as Ron Moody did into Fagin last week. But again, there is no insight into the character’s motivations or past to explain why he has ended up living like a mangy fox in South London, and done nothing much about it. Perhaps audiences at the time were so disenchanted with a Vietnam-battling government, that a street-rat such as he needed no further explanation.

This lack of character depth then has a knock-on effect when the ending, designed to be tragic, came across to me as a little contrived and emotionless. The character I was most moved and fascinated by was America and in particular late-60s New York City itself. That at least kept the film atmospheric, tragic, often daft, and visually gripping enough for me to never be bored. 

Highlight

Hoffman’s performance is, indeed, the stuff of legend. My favourite moment was when he sends Voight into a women-only hotel to pick up clients. As Rizzo waits outside, he dreams of glamorous Florida hotels where he lives his life partying with pretty women under a languorous sun. When Voight is suddenly thrown out of the hotel, the women in the day dream turn on Hoffman, and throw him into the pool. It’s fun, but a sad slice of internal monologue.

Lowlight

I would have liked the film to connect up more with the establishing flashbacks to create a “full circle” structure. What do Joe’s Grandmother and ex-girlfriend have to do with where he is now? We can only guess, and that’s not satisfying enough for me.

Mark

5/10

41. Oliver! (1968)

Plot Intro

Small Victorian orphan (Mark Lester) makes his way from a concentration-camp-esque workhouse to the ebullient streets of merry old London town, where he becomes embroiled in an organised crime gang of street urchins led by Fagin (Ron Moody) and the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild), as well as the abusive Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and hair-straight-out-of-Woodstock Nancy (Shani Wallis). 

Paul says...

This is our fourth and final musical to win Best Picture in the ‘60s. It’s also our very last musical until Chicago in 2002. After a lengthy run of vibrant, Christmas-Day-with-the-family pieces, things are about to take a turn for the darker. And the beauty of Oliver! is that, unlike its most recent predecessors, The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady, there’s a dirty, nasty rottenness to it that displays the way films were heading in this era of social liberation and changing values.

I’ve often heard over the years from Very Disparaging People that Oliver! is an excessively softened-down rewrite of Dickens’ original novel. The opening titles themselves state that the musical has been adapted “freely”, and this is true to some extent. Oliver’s long-lost brother, Monks, is removed entirely; Nancy’s prostitution and syphilis-riddled complexion have been hastily omitted; Fagin is far more clownish than his snivelling, immoral Dickensian counterpart and references to his Jewishness are rightfully gone (Dickens refers to Fagin as “the Jew” more than he uses the character’s real name); and, let’s face it, those young boys are far too well-fed and rosy-cheeked to be living a life on the mean streets of Victorian London.

However, having not seen this film for many years, a re-viewing after reading the novel has shown just how much of Dickens’ gritty realism has been left in. This is a far-cry from white-teethed Gene Kelly and the ballet dances of West Side Story. Nancy’s murder is just as horrifying as the book, where her battering to death is described with Tarantino-esque detail; physical and psychological abuse of children ranges from throwing Oliver into a coffin to beating him with a belt to kidnapping him and eventually forcing him to climb onto a beam several storeys off the ground; and Nancy and Sikes’ relationship is a case of classic domestic abuse (Nancy should have been on the phone to the Samaritans long before it got this far). 

And, like all the great Dickens stories, it’s the villains of the piece that make it worth your while. Oliver Reed used to terrify me as a child and he still has an unstable, semi-inebriated glower that sends chills down your spine. Ron Moody’s Fagin is a masterclass in body language and comedy-meets-darkness. And Harry Secombe’s Mr Bumble is briefer than you might think bearing in mind he is the one who yells out the classic “MOOOOORE?!” I’d also forgotten how much I enjoy Nancy. Shani Wallis has that hard-faced, gravel-voiced look that we see in Eastenders regularly. Gone is the white-washed, artificial glamour and innocence of Leslie Caron and Julie Andrews. This 60s, bra-burning, pint-pouring Nancy is more like Valerie Solanas than Maria Von Trapp. 

Oliver! may be the sort of musical that your Grandma falls asleep to on Christmas Day with half a pint of sherry spilling down her legs, but the dark streak to it is refreshing and powerful. For years, I thought that nothing could beat The Sound of Music for an example of perfectly exuberant film-making, but now I feel it has a rival. Oliver! is a soaring, emotional, lively piece that deserves the legacy it has made. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out.

Highlight

“Who Will Buy” is an astonishing set piece, building up from one woman selling roses, to literally hundreds of extras all showcasing various Victorian ways of life. It’s easy to see why London tourism sky-rocketed after the release of this film.

Lowlight

A pernickety point, but Mark Lester is a notoriously weak lead. Awkward and lacking in spontaneity compared to Jack Wild’s effortlessness as the Artful Dodger.

Mark

10/10

Doug says...

Oliver! is a fascinating musical film for a variety of reasons. It is almost certainly the most inventive and groundbreaking of our musicals so far, and it pulls off the remarkable feat of having mostly jolly tunes with a sordid darkness seeping through underneath. Much like the juddering wooden steps that creak ominously above a muddy sinkhole, we get given a dazzling energetic film full of fabulous choreography and huge ensemble pieces (‘Who Will Buy’ always deserves a shout out for its sublime build up), which then has sudden jolting moments of darkness coming through - Bill Sikes takes off his belt to whip Oliver, Fagin’s friendly countenance fades to reveal a snivelling rat-like scrambling, and of course Nancy betrays Oliver and dies trying to put it right. 

It’s an innovative film for the ways in which it achieves this. A massive part of how director Carol Reed did this is through camera angles. During ‘I’d Do Anything’, Nancy and the boys sing and dance imitating the hoi polloi of London society. But what is usually a cheery spirited song takes on a melancholy aspect through the placing of cameras low down by the floor and high up in the rafters - we see the orphan boys pretending to be something that they never will be, and the angles allow you to see the dirty decaying surroundings more fully, bringing home the fact that these people will live and die in this squalor, able to access higher society only through mocking it. 

It’s been cut extraordinarily well too. The stage show features a host more songs (all of which are very good) but here it’s been reduced to the best and most plot-driving ones, and in the most sublime move, ‘Oom Pah Pah’ has been taken from just being a song that Nancy sings, to being a song that Nancy actively uses to get the pub dancing to cover her stealing Oliver away. It’s Shani Wallis’s finest moment, her eyes darting nervously as she desperately stirs the pub up into a dancing commotion and imbuing a normally slap-your-thigh song with real tension. 

And Wallis is fabulous. The old standard ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ actually feels dull through its familiarity - her Nancy’s finest work comes through far more subtle moments. During ‘It’s A Fine Life’ she cheerfully sings ‘Though you sometimes do come by/ the occasional black eye/ you can always cover one / ’til he blacks the other one/ but you don’t dare cry.’ Wallis somehow conveys - though beaming and dancing - an inner exhaustion. She is trapped in this circle and in love with a monster (Oliver Reed in a monotone, terrifying performance). Her performance is only topped by the masterclass that is Ron Moody’s Fagin. He delivers a performance of so many layers that you are left quite bedazzled. Singing ‘Reviewing the Situation’ to a very expressive owl, he keeps you on your toes, laughing and sorrowful in equal measure. 

So it’s a cracking film, very well put together, full of fabulous songs, darkness seeping up through the purposefully upbeat music, and some utterly sublime performances. Why have I not given it a ten? It’s one reason only. The lead Mark Lester is atrocious. 

Paul mentioned it, but I found it so much more off putting. The child cannot act, he cannot sing, his voice is that of a well-educated angelic little thing, and ultimately he is so awful that you get the feeling that Carol Reed actively tried to make him appear less. During the 10+ minute long ‘Who Will Buy’ he gets about one verse and then they cut to him for a second-long reaction about twice in the whole thing. And while Oliver!’s main character is actually Fagin (in the stage revival, the whole design focused around Fagin’s hat and pipe) you can’t help wishing they’d had a child actor of Jack Wild’s talent. A shame. 

Highlight

It’s a toss-up between Ron Moody’s entire performance, or the extraordinary re-imagining of ‘Oom Pah Pah’ as a tense set-piece with Shani Wallis stirring up mayhem. 

Lowlight

Mark Lester (see above)

Mark

9/10 (a mark deducted for Lester's awfulness)

40. In The Heat of the Night (1967)

Plot Intro

In a conservative Mississippi town, a man is found dead on the street. The Chief of the local Police, Gillespie (Rod Steiger) must find out who did it and why - and his first suspect is a stranger to the town, a black man named Virgil Tibbs (Sydney Poitier). Tibbs, however, turns out to be a Police Detective from the far more liberal Philadelphia who is just passing through. But on discovering that Tibbs is also the best detective in the city, Gillespie grudgingly requests Tibbs’ help in the murder investigation- and the local townsfolk are furious.

Doug says...

And we’re back to 1967 reviewing the Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night having had a short break to see all the 2018 Best Picture Nominees (wasn’t Sally Hawkins great? I loved Lady Bird etc etc). 

And it’s a really interesting and painful film to come back to. The last 2018 nominee we watched was the superb Get Out, dealing with issues of race. And here - fifty-one years earlier - is a film doing exactly the same. It’s the painful realisation that too little has actually changed. And even by the end of the film, it doesn’t feel like anyone has changed or adapted except perhaps Chief Gillespie who learns to be a tiny bit less racist. Whoo. 

The film uses various moments to shock - and boy do they. One very polite white man turns out to be a throwback to slave-masters and slaps Virgil Tibbs for trying to question him. There’s several scenes where gangs of white men attempt to kill Virgil, whether it’s beating him to death with iron poles or plain out pointing guns at him. And ultimately they don’t learn to do anything different, the only reason Virgil escapes is either someone saves him, or the rabble gets distracted. It’s unsatisfying purely through it not fully addressing how people could - and should - change. Let alone why they shouldn’t use the ’n’ word (which of course appears in abundance here). 

It does feature a stand-out performance from Sidney Poitier. Just like in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, he presents an entirely respectable and polite man, being the centre of a maelstrom purely because of his skin colour. There’s some superb acting - not least the silent look of shock and horror in his eyes when a policeman points at cotton picking workers and asks ‘decided to go a different way did you?’ It’s horrendous, and Poitier gives us a layered, powerful performance that never lets us forget it. 

The plot is a little confused and relies on some quick turning points towards the end of the film, and it doesn’t feel a particularly stand-out winner. But Poitier’s performance is superb and it’s somewhat savage that the winner of 1967’s film has almost exactly the same core issues as a nominee of 2018. Sad, but (even more sadly) unsurprising. 

Highlight 

Sidney Poitier does great work as a determined, undefeated black policeman surrounded by horrifically racist thugs. 

Lowlight

The plot does become murky and somewhat disengaging about half way through. You don’t really care about the outcome, and who is eventually unmasked as the murderer. I think it’s because there’s no catharsis for the real villain of the film - racism. 

Mark 

5/10 

Paul says...

1967 was quite a phenomenal year for Best Picture nominees. In the Heat of the Night beat The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Doolittle and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner to the crown. The last of these also starred Sydney Poitier, with Beah Richards in a supporting role, and tackled the issue of racism in an age when civil rights was heavily in the headlines. The fact that two nominees put racial segregation into the spotlight is made all the more poignant when we discover that the Academy Awards that year was postponed by two days due to the murder of Martin Luther King in April 1968.

But while Coming to Dinner took a nuanced, tender, family-oriented study of interracial marriage, Heat of the Night takes the gritty, violent route. Enraged mobs of white men surround the one black character, the N-word is used in abundance, the villainous characters are not just verbally unpleasant- they are blood-thirsty and immoral and, at the climactic reveal, animalistic and war-faring. Most shockingly, their behaviour is not that much different from the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville last year. A 50-year-old film is usually the sort of thing we watch whilst saying things like “Thank God nothing like this happens now”, but when you get right down to it, how far have we really come?

This film displays racism with brutal honesty and viciousness, and this is by far the most compelling part. Admittedly, it doesn’t go much further than point out that everyone except Sydney Poitier and the dead man’s wife are completely bigoted and awful (which is about as insightful as a Hollyoaks storyline), and more recent films on similar subjects like The Help and Hidden Figures have delved into the psychology of racism with more depth, having had the benefit of reflecting on the level of segregation in the '50s and '60s. But, in all fairness, white people can be very bigoted and awful, so the film shouldn’t be brought down as a result.

I felt it was a shame, however, that the central murder mystery is so lacklustre. Initially I thought we were in for something along the lines of Se7en- a strong character study combined with a juicy twist-laden tale. But we never really know anything about the victim, and the mystery itself is just a series of false accusations against one suspect after another. I get the impression that the filmmakers were far more preoccupied with the social aspect of the film than with the sensationalist aspect. But I liked the final reveal because, although it’s not exactly an Agatha Christie “NO WAY!” revelation, it still reveals the allegedly superior white race to be nothing more than a pack of rampant, volatile neanderthals, and I think that’s the entire point that the film is making.

I also wasn’t entirely convinced by the character development in Gillespie, even though Rod Steiger won Best Actor for this. I think that we’re supposed to eventually see him as prejudiced but grudgingly respectful of Virgil’s Sherlock Holmes-like abilities. We are meant to perceive him with a combination of exasperation for his ill-conceived self-importance, and amusement for his difficulty to overcome this white-skinned superiority. To be honest, I saw him as a bit of a dickhead who picks and chooses when he listens to Virgil, and when he dismisses him. To modern eyes, I would argue that he is far less sympathetic and supportable.

In the Heat of the Night is the first instance of the dark, sexy crime thrillers that will permeate the late '60s and most of the '70s. With youth rebellion, sexual liberation and civil rights on the tip of everyone’s tongue, it’s a welcome departure from the fluffy comfort of My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. Audiences want to see the real world now- not the one Rodgers and Hammerstein made up. But this is not the most exciting nor the most powerful of films in the Oscars canon. 

Highlight

The scene in which Virgil is pursued by a group of Confederate-flag-waving thugs is pretty intense. The pirouetting gangs of West Side Story are replaced with, well, real gangs.

Lowlight

Gillespie is an outdated character for me. Nowadays, someone like him needs to display much more regret and redemption for audiences to like him.

Mark

4/10