8.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
An African American police detective is asked to investigate a murder in a racially hostile southern town.
Starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Larry GatesDrama | 100% |
Film-Noir | 96% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
German: DTS 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital=Latin American, DTS-HD MA=Castilian / Japanese is hidden
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Nearly fifty years after the release of In the Heat of the Night (hereafter "ItHotN"), it may be almost impossible for new viewers to appreciate the impact of the film's images on contemporary viewers. The country was still in the thick of the Sixties' civil rights movement; indeed, the Oscar ceremony at which the film would receive five awards, including Best Picture, was delayed for two days following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Just three years before ItHotN filled American movie screens with scenes of a small town Mississippi police force staffed by bigots, the media were saturated with stories of three young civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, abducted and murdered by Klansmen and members of the Neshoba County, Mississippi sheriff's department. When the fictional Southern officers falsely arrested an "uppity" black cop from the north, everyone in the audience immediately felt the "heat" of the title. In an instantly famous scene later in the film, when the black cop actually slapped the town's leading citizen, audiences were stunned. Nothing like this had ever been seen in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Everyone could identify with the sentiment of Police Chief Gillespie, who, when asked what he intended to do about the slap, simply answered, "I don't know." ItHotN may no longer be as explosively topical today, but it's still an absorbing entertainment fueled by powerhouse performances from Rod Steiger (who won the Best Actor Oscar as Gillespie) and Sydney Poitier, based on an ingenious script by Stirling Silliphant (another Oscar winner) adapting a novel by John Ball, crisply edited by future director Hal Ashby (yet another Oscar) and sharply directed by Norman Jewison (who was nominated for Best Director but lost to Mike Nichols for The Graduate). The film also won an Oscar for sound, which probably should have been for its jazz/blues musical score by Quincy Jones that gave its soundtrack a quality unlike any other motion picture being released at the time. The music provided a sense of authenticity, even though, for reasons of safety, the film had to be shot almost entirely in Illinois.
In his commentary/interview, cinematographer Haskell Wexler discusses the challenges, and describes some of the strategies he employed, in lighting the many dark locations for In the Heat of the Night, given the slow film stocks of the era. The result, as reproduced on Fox/MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, is a richly textured and colorful image, but many Blu-ray fans will be dissatisfied with it, as is so often the case with classic films from this era. Before home video, viewers went to the theater, sat in their seats and watched the story and the characters; they didn't worry about grain, softness or degree of detail, and they certainly didn't freeze the image to flyspeck its quality frame by frame. ItHotN looks exceptionally good for a film from 1967. The elements are in excellent shape (or have been well-restored), with almost no evident damage or degeneration. The image is soft but detailed, with an evident but natural grain structure. The colors are especially vivid and varied, with the strongest reds and blues I can recall in any home video version of the film. The shadows of night are solidly black, which is critical to how Wexler's visual design directs the eye, especially in the opening sequence depicting Tibbs's arrival in Sparta and the explosive confrontation that serves as the film's climax. The film doesn't have much in the way of fast action, but the relatively high average bitrate of 32.82 Mbps is appropriate for proper handling of the grain structure. Nothing has been lost or compromised in compression. Complaints are inevitable that the review's video score is too high and/or that the Blu-ray looks like an upconverted DVD. This is unavoidable in a world where too many eyes are no longer familiar with the look of film, especially film from an earlier era. I was around when ItHotN was new, and this is a fine rendition. Additional note: I have been advised that this master was taken from a dupe negative derived from separation elements, but the dupe negative was created by analog scanning, which routinely results in a degree of misalignment. Therefore, a certain amount of instability was baked into the dupe negative, which is the main reason why much of the background detail in the Blu-ray image appears indistinct. The effect is similar to what 1967 audiences probably saw after the print at their local cinema had been run through the projector for a week or so. Some posters in the Blu-ray.com forum have attributed this phenomenon to digital manipulation, but in fact it's an accurate reflection of what is on the negative as it currently exists. Had MGM invested the time and money, the instability in the dupe negative could have been substantially reduced for Blu-ray. Contemporary software tools allow the three separation layers to be disassembled digitally, then reassembled with greater precision, resulting in a sharper image than was probably available to many original viewers in 1967. Perhaps, at some future date, either MGM or a third party will allocate the budget for such a restoration. The important point, however, is that any perceived instability in the image does not result from digital tampering but almost certainly the opposite: a lack of digital repair.
The film's original mono soundtrack has been remixed for 5.1, presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA. Like most good remixes of mono tracks, it's a front-oriented mix that provides additional clarity and definition by directing the vocals and effects to the center and allowing the musical score to expand to the left and right. Quincy Jones's wonderful score sounds better than ever, although the dynamic range is somewhat limited by the original source. It's a minor but noticeable improvement on the mono mix, and those who insist on 5.1 can comfort themselves that they're getting a remix.
MGM first released In the Heat of the Night on DVD in 2001 with a commentary and trailer. The 2008 "40th Anniversary Collector's Edition" added three featurettes. All of those extras have been ported over to the Blu-ray. As per their usual user-unfriendly practice with MGM catalog titles, Fox Home Video has formatted the disc with BD-Java, no main menu and no bookmarking to allow the viewer to stop and resume at the same point.
Steiger's Gillespie is one of the great screen characters of modern cinema. He's loud, annoying, a bully, often a buffoon, and racism is bred into his DNA—and yet you can't take your eyes off him. Repeatedly throughout ItHotN, Gillespie exceeds the sum of his cliches to become, if only for a moment, something more than the stereotypical redneck cop that everyone assumes he'll be when he first appears. Of all the radical elements in the film, the most unexpected may have been making a hero out of someone whose look recalled the notorious Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama, or the sheriff and deputies indicted for killing Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. As the best stories do, ItHotN found a core of humanity in the least likely place, which is yet another reason why it still holds up. Highly recommended.
Awards O-Ring Slipcover
1967
1967
1967
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1950
1944
Limited Edition to 3000
1959
1944
1946
Warner Archive Collection
1951
1955
1995
1968
1950
Encore Edition | Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1953
Limited Edition to 3000
1950
1986
1947
2006
1957
Warner Archive Collection
1947
1971
1997
1946