Perhaps the seminal movie of American race relations made during the Civil Rights movement, Norman Jewison’s titanic In the Heat of the Night was a zeitgeist movie for that historical arc of demonstrations and upheaval. Sidney Poitier’s upstanding city detective forced to work with Rod Steiger’s Southern sheriff in his sleepy small town make up one of cinema’s great odd couples and engines for justice and understanding. A clarion call for peace and against prejudice, the film won five Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Actor for Steiger, and Editing for an up-and-coming Hal Ashby) less than a week after assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
“This is a brisk, well-oiled thriller with blistering performances and a crackling, memorable script.” – Tom Huddleston, Time Out
“Norman Jewison has taken a hard, outspoken script, prepared by Stirling Silliphant from an undistinguished novel by John Ball, and, with stinging performances contributed by Rod Steiger as the chief of police and Sidney Poitier as the detective, he has turned it into a film that has the look and sound of actuality and the pounding pulse of truth.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
