Word: jewison
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...small-town cop who knows he is The Law, the wobbly waddle in the sun that evokes languidity induced by oppressive heat. To achieve the effect, Steiger relied on his standard technique: total immersion. "I've never seen a man become a role so much," recalls Director Norman Jewison. "Two weeks after we started the picture it was almost impossible to talk to Rod Steiger because he was in a Southern dialect night...
...annual National Student Film Festival. Jointly sponsored by the National Student Association, the Motion Picture Association of America and Manhattan's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the festival last month showed entries from 37 colleges, which were judged by a panel that included Directors Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night), Irving Kershner (The Flim Flam Man), and Producer Philip Leacock (Gun-smoke). The prizewinners in the contest's four major categories...
...mystery, Heat of the Night won't stand up Detective Poi tier does most of his investigating off screen, and several critical links to the murder's solution are left unexplained. Apparently realizing this, Jewison has defended the picture's weakness as a melodrama by saying, in effect, that it isn't one. He suggests that the real subject matter is the relationship between Poi tier and Stinger, and that the loose construction of the mystery throws proper emphasis onto that relationship. As long as this argument wasn't devised after the picture's completion, one can assume that Jewison...
...other hand, the murder in Heat of the Night does seem a bit more earthly than most movie crimes. And the slow, confusing solution probably has more to do with real police-work than its neat, ingenious melo-drama counterparts. Only Jewison isn't content with naturalism either; his detective relies excessively on a rather implausible knowledge of orchids, pules equally obscure and unlikely reservoirs of genius. Perhaps the most extreme example in this regard is the moment when Poitier snatches a weed off the accelerator of the victim's car and, a knowing smile on his face, says "Osmunda...
With his cast, Jewison is uneasy. Poitier, a perfectly competent actor, ends up doing just what he has done in his last dozen interchangeable movies. And Lee Grant, as a bereaved widow, overacts like crazy, feigning grief by endlessly shaking her head. Predictably, the most impressive performance is that of Rod Steiger, but even his is shrouded in the high-television fakery that dominates the movie...