To understand how and why In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture it's important to remember the place of black Americans inside as well as outside the social mainstream in 1967. It's likewise necessary to remember Sidney Poitier's position within this moment as being more important than any other actors in any given film with which he was associated. Taken in the larger context of Civil Rights, the Vietnam era and the tumult of the 1960s, his performances were central to then-contemporary ideas about where the American project was headed and, more importantly, what it was intended to become.

Implicit was a redefinition of socio-cultural attitudes central to the representation of black Americans and championed by the likes of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali. Though Poitier was not as prominently political as these figures he was far from disinterested in the racially charged nature of the moment. Plus he was able to capitalize on his fame by overcoming his having been a mere matinee idol after an apprenticeship in various Hollywood movies where he bubbled beneath the surface calm, often as a hoodlum.

With his maturation in motion pictures, and following his Best Actor Oscar for Lilies of the Field, Poitier emerged in the mid-'60s as the pre-eminent mainstream personality for black America that was most palatable to white American sensibilities and interests. In large part this was because of his courteous polish, handsome good lucks, subdued sexual charisma and overall skill as a screen personality without adequate precedent. Thus, Sidney Poitier was an original for times that required new cinematic images and situations to overturn years, if not centuries, of racist stereotypes.

Starring as Virgil Tibbs Poitier holds together Norman Jewison's film of John Ball's novel that was subsequently translated for the screen by Stirling Silliphant. It opens to the strains of a theme song written by the movie's composer Quincy Jones and sung by Ray Charles. Over the credits we learn that Tibbs is disembarking at a small town railway station while a local policeman named Sam Wood (Warren Oates) performs his nightly rounds, including his peeping in on the home of a local tease.

When Woods finds a prominent businessman named Colbert slain in the wee morning hours his boss, Sheriff Gillespie (Rod Steiger), appears at the crime scene to spearhead a speedy investigation. Tibbs is snatched up at the train station as much for a being a black man as for being a stranger in town and therein is the coincident spin upon which the movie works its timely sense of purpose.

After being told to confess to being a murder, Tibbs reveals he's a vacationing homicide detective on his way back home in Philadelphia and that he had nothing to do with Colbert's untimely destruction. With disbelief Tibbs's revelation hits Gillespie like a ton of breaks, not only for the way Tibbs comports himself but also after it becomes clear he is more capable of solving the crime than any member of Gillespie's local law enforcement team. Unfortunately, Tibbs is also black and manages to focus the entrenched prejudice of the entire town upon him and Gillespie who is likewise an outsider only recently hired to bring order to local affairs.

Over a few days investigation, and despite Gillespie's bumbling, Tibbs learns how Colbert was in conflict with the business interests of the local rich man named Endicott (Larry Gates). Using the inconsistencies of physical evidence and his own sense of things being out of order, Tibbs finally solves the crime as being one of accidental timing and much smaller stakes. In a bloody climax it's revealed that Colbert was killed by the town soda-jerk so he could pay for the abortion of his girlfriend, the local tease introduced in the film's credit sequence.

Regardless of this Scooby Doo conclusion and its red herring-filled murder investigation, In the Heat of the Night is famous for its reluctant partnership as played by Poitier and Steiger. To film enthusiasts the movie is also well remembered for Jewison's direction, Silliphant's script, Jones's score, Haskell Wexler's cinematography and Hal Ashby's Oscar-winning work as editor. But the lasting significance of the film is undoubtedly its representation of a black man being the superior soul over a number of white men who presume their own importance.

This point, nowhere more significantly played out than in Tibbs's confrontation with Endicott where they each slap one another, is considerable from the standard of what it accomplished with regard to changing how black Americans could be represented on film. Tibbs is repeatedly demonstrated as the only competent, and quite possibly the only skilled, police officer around and this despite the clearly prejudicial behavior acted out against him and his criminal quarry. He is the film's moral center and acts through a professional mien that makes him uniquely capable of solving a murder that defies the rules of evidence, motive and common sense.

Still, Poitier's performance, while being the glue of the film, is not the more celebrated of the two lead roles, nor is it the meatier part. Steiger's work as Sheriff Gillespie was also convincingly portrayed but it was in his transformation from racist cop to being a three-dimensional man with a conscience that the character truly came to life. In this way the part upholds a tradition of using black characters and actors to instruct white characters, and white people more generally, in the methods of their own humanity. But Steiger's performance implicitly shows a troubled man forced to recognize his many limitations while discovering how to escape his narrow confines, especially through a role that was written to be the more moving, if not the showier, of the two lead parts. Importantly, Gillespie was also the character more attuned to the nature of white America, many members of which were just then, in 1967, learning to overcome their long-standing prejudice concerning their attitudes and actions towards black America.

Not to be stripped of symbolic purpose in the culture of the times, two talented men enacted these lead parts to imbue them with depth, emotion and personality. Significantly Tibbs and Gillespie echoed what was going on off-screen and in the world of audiences that were simultaneously working through one of the most revolutionary of social changes ever felt in the history of the United States. In a similar vein movies of the times were focused on representing not just the racial nature of the 1960s but also the anti-establishment bend of the Baby Boomers and the consequent anti-war sentiment that fomented throughout President Johnson's administration.

As far as the Academy Awards were concerned, 1967 was defined by revolutionary flavors and one piece of old Hollywood escapism. Alongside the eventual Oscar winner there was competition from Arthur Penn's Warren Beatty vehicle Bonnie and Clyde that remains a bona fide cinematic classic. Mike Nichols presented Dustin Hoffman's star turn in The Graduate and Sidney Poitier was able to double-up his role as the leading black actor of his day with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? that featured him as the pivot for not just one but two different celebrated films. Closing out these five nominated films was the musical Doctor Dolittle that seems like an antiquated and somewhat out of touch fantasy, especially now in light of Eddie Murphy's late '90s revisions.

I'm not one to ignore the seminal importance of art acting within its context to provoke important cultural discourse. In the Heat of the Night is no doubt one such piece of art and its legacy is closely tied to the way Virgil Tibbs stood up to the man to overcome racist environs and do the right thing. Such a role within the mainstream was later to contribute quite forcefully to Blaxploitation's opposite tack but in 1967 it was exactly the right moment for Tibbs to step on-screen and shock Sheriff Gillespie out of his moral and ethical torpor.

As an overall assessment of the picture of the year, though, Jewison's movie rings the bell of liberal humanism that all his films have largely been associated with over the years. There is very little to find critically wrong with this Poitier/Steiger buddy film save the fact it is very narrowly focused on its contextual moment making it an interesting, though dated, historical record.

I'm hard pressed to agree with In the Heat of the Night being the best picture for 1967. Not when considering also rans like Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate that remain more interesting and instructive as to a wider set of historical circumstances than the primarily race-oriented impulse behind Jewison's movie.

This is not to say race, and consequently regional questions of class, are secondary to other cultural forces like sex, gender and generation. But it is to say that aside from the Tibbs slap to Endicott's white face, and aside from those who argue for Jones's score as being one of the greats in movie history, In the Heat of the Night is a relatively slight entertainment. In its moment, of course, it was so much more but from our potentially more progressive position after the fact it's very dated and cool only to the extent it strikes us as being useful for knowing who we once were without having specific connection to who we are right now.