Avis des critiques

It’s the anger, the pride, and the reassembly that stand out most in this film. It’s the evocative power of Poitier’s performance, in particular, that makes In the Heat of the Night feel practically like two separate films, whose extraordinary double vision can only really be appreciated from a black perspective.

A feverish tension crackles in each frame of In the Heat of the Night, sparked by the very real danger involved in making the film. In the Heat of the Night is not a ‘historical fiction' as such but very much an urgent product of its time.

Wow… As Dinah Washington once sang, "what a difference a day makes". It would be disingenuous to say that Norman Jewison's sweat-dappled southern policier gains a chilling relevance at a time when then the White House is being populated with white supremacist yahoos, because the film's power was evident long prior to the world going very wrong indeed.

Long seen as the square choice in the 1967 Best Picture race - at least compared to BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE - but in fact its technique is quite modish, wonderfully moody photography and often jagged editing (opening shot, post-credits: an ECU of a fly on the wall) aimed at a sophisticated audience.

It's not a very good movie. Not awful, just not very good. The mystery plot makes so little sense that the audience is forced to concentrate exclusively on the vaudeville routines performed by Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier.