Word: sundowners
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...turned him over to the Romans for a speedy trial and death. For one thing, it is most unlikely that the Sanhedrin would have undertaken any kind of fact-finding investigation on behalf of the hated bloody-handed Pontius Pilate. Just as improbable would have been a trial after sundown-especially on the eve of Passover, when most members of the Sanhedrin would have been busy with ritual preparations for the feast. Still, if they had met, under Jewish law any condemnation would have required the sworn testimony of at least two trustworthy witnesses. Even according to the Gospels, none...
...rioting and boarded up windows in anticipation of further trouble. Local Negro businessmen put signs reading "Soul Brother" on their stores in the hope that rioters would pass them over. The afternoon and evening were relatively quiet as the usual Saturday night crowds gathered in the streets. After sundown, however, small bands of youths began to rove through the area. Unlike Friday night, the action was not centered on Blue Hill Ave., but was scattered throughout Roxbury. Police raced from one incident to another, but their presence only seemed to increase the tension...
...late '50's and early '60's, Preminger turned to social spectacle (Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advice and Consent, The Cardinal). His latest movie, Hurry Sundown, has in fact prompted many critics to suggest that what Preminger did for the Jew in Exodus and for the Catholic in The Cardinal--whatever that is--he is now doing for the American Negro. But viewed as a picture about race relations, Hurry Sundown is meaningless and banal. The great social dilemmas of the age have somehow passed Otto Preminger by the way, and his perceptions seem no longer relevant...
Unfortunately the most interesting angle in Hurry Sundown -- the Caine character and his giant industrial complex, symbolic of the sudden change coming over the South in the wake of the war -- is ultimately lost beneath a rubbish of uninteresting violence and melodrama. A trial scene straight out of Perry Mason (via Horton Foote and To Kill a Mockingbird) works by itself but doesn't jell at all with the rest of the picture. A hopelessly embarrassing songfest, at which the town's entire Negro population is conveniently present, reminds one of similar affairs in Marx Bros. movies...
...first 45 minutes of Hurry Sundown would be hard to fault. The last 45 minutes, at least in terms of the script, would be hard to find anything good about. The problem is that Preminger's setting -- the postwar South -- is seen not from twenty years later but from the contemporary Hollywood of the late 40's. There is no reason why, in the context of this one picture, Preminger had to tackle the great social questions of the South. His two leading characters were fascinating enough for him to have avoided treating racial questions at all. But as long...