Heat of The Night Reflection

The Heat of the Night film is centered around the job and help provided by the Black detective Virgil Tibbs from Philadelphia who is going through Mississippi to visit family. He gets involved in the murder mystery as a suspect due to his suspicious nature of being a black man in the state of Mississippi. As the movie progresses, we see that no evidence was given to support the arrest of Officer Tibbs, so he goes against the Mississippi police department and head chief Bill Gillespie and does his own investigation to solve the homicide case. 

The movie shows the aspects of being discriminated against as a detective of the police force and race relations in the 60’s. The movies we have seen as a class show very little complexities of Black characters in a progression of time since the era of Gone with the Wind and Band of Angels. The two previous movies were centered around the era of slavery and romance, and to see a movie with such a different plot and action was intriguing. I believe the movies lack of romance in the plot made the movie better. The last point I would like to make is about the wonderful acting ability of Sydney Portier.

Heat of the Night as a whole was captivating in part due to the mystery of the film, and only made better by the brilliance of Sydney Portier’s acting. Sydney's ability to portray the emotions of anger felt by his character throughout much of the movie added to the emotions felt as an audience throughout the film. An example of heightening emotions felt by the audience would be when Virgil Tibbs speaks to Endicott about his whereabouts when the victim was murdered. The conversation leads to Endicott feeling inferior for having to answer to a Black man. The questioning continues which leads to the altercation between Virgil and Endicott, where both men slap each other. The reaction I had to the altercation between these two men was pure shock, because I was not expecting for Virgil to slap Endicott partly, because a black man defending himself against a white man was shocking to see due to the time period of the movie taking place in the 60's.