In the Heat of the Night

In the Heat of the Night

I have chosen to study the film "In the Heat of the Night". In

particular, I have chosen to study the scene in which Tibbs and

Golesby confront Endicott at his villa on his plantation.

Firstly, I watched the scene through a couple of times to try and pick

up an overall idea of the theme of the scene. The scene is quite long,

containing 56 shots in total. The shots themselves are also long, as

what is going on is a wordy confrontation, not a violent one, unlike

in the car chase scene, where all the shots are very quick; a long

shot brings an air of calm, whereas a quick, snappy shot conveys a

sense of action. This makes the action be almost comic book in style,

because you are seeing not linear movement, but what is almost a

series of stills or very quick movements. However, in the Endicott

scene, everything is very linear and slow moving in comparison. The

scene overall is quite light and pleasant, especially out the front of

Endicott's house and in his greenhouse. This pleasant outlook is often

in stark contrast to what is being said.

What I did next is to watch the scene through several times without

sound, to try and pick up the purely visual points in the scene. The

first shot struck me as an ominous one; it is of the camera pointing

directly into the cutting blades of a large cutting machine, which is

moving towards the camera. If nothing else, it really catches the

attention of the viewer as a powerful image. Personally, I think it is

an omen of bad things to come. After the cotton-picker has "eaten" the

camera from the first shot, the screen pans out and you see an

overview of the fields. They are full of black slaves, assumedly,

picking the cotton. A few of the picking machines can be seen, but the

black slaves are picking the majority of the cotton by hand. Apart

from the machines, there is not much there to say that this is the