Griff in den Staub

I usually don't like movies based on famous and well-established authors, "sure bets". They seem to be telling the public "You can't POSSIBLY dislike this!!!" I tend to prefer movies that take chances with unknown authors or actors, movies that care for art, not money. But this one is so well-made. Everything works: the photography, the acting, the pacing, and it has that documentary beauty of real life that so few movies have (love those window shots where you see small town downtown traffic!). It's historic interest also makes it enjoyable. A kind of poetry pervades this movie that makes it far more effective than the similar "To Kill a Mockingbird". Hernandez is pure dignity - character and actor - and Jarman is a most refreshing contrast to today's smart-alecky youth. He has a humility that is touching. It is hard to imagine another actor in that role. Is this movie on the side of the angels? Sure. And the black and white poetry saves it.

An unjustly neglected classic, "Intruder in the Dust" is one of the great films of the 1940's which has unfortunately slipped into obscurity. Based on a story by William Faulker, and shot in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, "Intruder" tells the story of Lucas Beauchamp (played with great dignity by Juano Hernandez), a black man unjustly accused of the murder of a local white man, and a white boy (Claude Jarman, Jr.) who uses this situation as an opportunity to pay a previous debt to Beauchamp. Terrific acting, especially by two great character actors, Porter Hall (as the dead man's father) and Elizabeth Patterson (best known as Mrs. Trumbull on "I Love Lucy") as an old woman willing to stand against the townspeople to see that right is done. This straightforward, tense and sincere study of racial bigotry deserves to be seen more.

No movie could ever do justice to Faulkner's command of the English language. but they did a pretty good job here. Lucas Beauchamp is exactly the way I pictured him in the book, as is Chick. What the movie couldn't really go into was how Beauchamp wasn't liked by the Negro people either, because he was equally as stubborn. Not that it is a bad thing, but from my take on the book that was his attitude toward the world (yet, I got the feeling it was white society's racism that started it and it spilled over into Negro society, until that became his attitude toward everyone).

the best part of the movie is that you get to see Yoknapatawpha county (actually, Oxford, Mississippi) exactly as Faulkner wrote about it (the film was made when Faulkner was alive and writing). It doesn't look that much different today. Because of this alone, the movie is worth a watch considering it is filmed in Faulkner's backyard. A true must see for Faulkner fans.

Director Clarence Brown does a tremendous job in presenting Juano Hernandez as a dignified man living within a southern community steeped in Jim Crow. Hernandez is falsely accused of murder and is resigned to the fact that this prejudice will lead to his incarceration or worse.

The movie is full of surprises and, happily, ends on a positive note. One of the major movies on racial or cultural prejudice of the era, it was done after Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), Crossfire (1947), but precedes Sidney Poitier's No Way Out (1950) by a year. Clearly, the only other movie that touched on this issue beforehand was the first version of Imitation of Life (1934).

This era was a time when the motion picture industry was struggling with this issue and showed an earnest attempt at portraying this problem with dignity. Hernandez's role as Lucas Beauchamp was no ordinary role for a black actor during this time when the movie industry was still under the control of whites. All in all, this is one of the greats.

Great supporting acting from David Brian, Claude Jarman, Jr. and Elizabeth Patterson.

Chuck Mallison (Claude Jarmison Jr.) waits around in a crowd in the small Southern town where he lives as the sheriff brings in Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez) for shooting VInson Gowrie in the back. Lucas, before entering the jail, yells out to Chuck and tells him to get his uncle, an attorney.

Chuck tells his uncle John Stevens (David Brian) that he is troubled by his confusion over his attitude towards Lucas. Lucas is not like the other black men in the town. He doesn't show deference or fear to the white men who live there. In Chuck's only encounter with Lucas, when Chuck fell into an iced up pond on Lucas' property, it wasn't that Lucas behaved wrongly towards him - in fact he was quite hospitable. It was the fact that Lucas treated Chuck as an equal who happened to be a guest in his home. This recognition of the roots of racism growing inside of him seems to be what bothers Chuck more than anything since Chuck is simply not accustomed to a black man who feels free to be unlikeable and haughty with white people.

Chuck goes with his uncle when he talks to his new client, Lucas, that night in the jail. But Lucas won't help himself that much when talking to his attorney past the point of saying that he did not kill Gowrie. Part of the reason for that is probably the fact that Lucas' lawyer thinks that the best Lucas can hope for is a fair trial followed by a hanging versus a hanging with no trial. Initially he won't entertain the idea that Lucas could be innocent. Slowly it is revealed - to Chuck, to his uncle, and to an older woman who is a client of Chuck's uncle (Elizabeth Patterson), that Lucas could not have committed this crime. But they need not only very hard evidence of Lucas' innocence, they need evidence of the guilt of whoever did commit the murder. The criminal justice system, at this point, is pretty much a rubber stamp for conviction when it comes to black men, especially black men accused of killing a white man. Lucas' advocates don't need a reasonable doubt, they need a shadow of a doubt. And there is the threat of lynching until this trio gets that shadow of a doubt.

This was an excellent very early film on racism and the criminal justice system in the south, beating out To Kill a Mockingbird by more than a decade. Juano Hernandez is the heart of this film as Lucas Beauchamp. He displays an enigmatic dignity - you never know where he is coming from with his lack of explanation of what happened until the end. I'd highly recommend this one.