Crime · Drama · Mystery · Thriller
American
1967 · Directed by Norman Jewison · 109 min
A Black police detective from Philadelphia, passing through a small Mississippi town, is picked up at the railway station after a prominent visitor is found dead. The murder mystery is real, but so is the heat: every conversation is shaped by who is allowed to speak, and who is expected to listen.
Why it matters in cinema history
A key film of the late-1960s moment when Hollywood's liberal social-problem tradition met the more abrasive style of the New Hollywood, and a template for the later interracial partnership crime film.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a story about authority: who is believed, who is obeyed, and how each man holds himself when the other is in the room.
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