Resist Much/Obey Little: In the Heat of the Night with John Anzalone

Join John Anzalone (film professor and all around dude who makes us all feel smarter!) to inaugurate an occasional series we’ll call “Resist Much, Obey little” (after Walt Whitman) to showcase films with similar claims to the truth of American history.

THIS IS A WATCH AT HOME EVENT, SCENES AND CLIPS FROM THE MOVIE WILL BE UTILIZED BUT THE FILM WILL NOT BE SHOWN IN ITS ENTIRETY.

In the Heat of the Night. Norman Jewison, 1967
1967. Sparta, Mississippi. The deep South. An African American has to change trains in the middle of the night. Not far from the station where he waits for his connection, a murdered white man is found in the street. The traveller is arrested in the waiting room and brought to the police station. It is soon discovered that he’s a detective from Pennsylvania, who was on his way to visit his mother. His skill set is quickly put to use by a roughneck, racist police chief. What emerges is a powerful evocation of American society and its sordid history that needs to be seen and studied, rather than erased.
Sydney Poitier and Rod Steiger embody these unlikely allies with a power undiminished in the almost 60 years since the film’s release. In the Heat of the Night offers great performances, now in the service of a new imperative, that of preserving the memory of the truth of our history that powerful forces would prefer to bury.
“What came into focus was pain: the pain of racism born of the atrocity of slavery; the pain of lust bottled up by jealous love; the pain of poverty lathered across the land like plague; the pain of loneliness and alienation in the long hot Mississippi night. This play of pain was unique when it appeared on American movie screens, but the underlying truths this story exposes resonate in any age when there is inequality, poverty and hatred based on greed and its attendant lies.” Walter Mosely
Link to the Mosely essay: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/walter-mosley-heat-night-at-50-does-mister-tibbs-still-matter-1087832/
Free on site parking
No after event is scheduled