Nella polvere del profondo Sud

Take a look at those faces alongside the entrance to the jail. They're not the faces of Hollywood extras. Somebody in production was really smart to take filming to Oxford, Mississippi, because you can't get that kind of authenticity from a studio backlot. Scope out the narrow dusty roads, the frozen earth beneath, and the skeletal trees just barely hanging on. No wonder those faces look hard and unforgiving; they're just reflecting the soil from which they spring. Old man Lucas (Hernandez) better fear for his life, but then he springs from that same hard earth.

The movie works because it tells a good story that neither preaches nor sentimentalizes and even has some suspense. Old man Lucas is not very likable. He's a victim and we sympathize, but he's also haughty and unfriendly. Wisely, the script refuses to sweeten him up. That way we're forced to recognize the effects of racism and injustice on even the less sympathetic. The script also wisely avoids dealing directly with racism since that tends to become preachy and less effective. Instead, we're shown how easily prejudice can convict an innocent man and condemn him to a horrible death. So, it's through our common instinct to see justice done that the effects of racism are exposed, a much more effective pathway. It also makes the actions of the sheriff and the lawyer more understandable since they are otherwise part of the Jim Crow system.

Note how the movie doesn't attack segregation. It's doubtful that old man Lucas would want to mix with whites anyway and there's no hint that even lawyer Stevens (Brian) wants to cross the color line except to see justice done. No, the possibility of reconciliation lies in the future as symbolized by the kid (Jarman) whose head is not yet filled with "notions". He's not exactly friends with Lucas, but he has glimpsed the common humanity of being befriended after falling into the frozen creek. The last line of dialogue also shows him siding with his uncle, the lawyer, instead of his more hidebound parents (the dinner table scene is important and easily overlooked). The lawyer might not join a future civil rights march, but the kid might. That's the movie's realistically hopeful side.

There was a bunch of racially themed movies during this brief 3 year period, 1949-51, (The Well, No Way Out, Home of the Brave, Lost Boundaries). Even famously detached MGM got into the mix with this little gem. Unfortunately, the McCarthy purges in Hollywood put an end to "problem" films that might not serve Cold War ends. Even so, each of these is worth catching up with, not only because they're good movies, but because even with the passage of 60 years and Jim Crow, they're still relevant.

Juano Hernandez plays Lucas Beauchamp, a black farmer with a ten acre spread, who is facing a lynching at the hands of hundreds of poor and destitute looking whites who have come into the small Southern town by the busload, as he is locked away in the town's aging jail. His only hope is to prove his innocence of the crime of murdering one of the Gowrie boys, a family klan of five sons led by a father who lost an arm a long time ago as well as his wife. The back story of Lucas, the Gowries, and the assembling of whites who look more the part of poverty than any other film I've ever seen, give this film a heightened sense of realism, which is added to by super intelligent overall development. While there is a certain amount of overt racism in the film, the real story seems to lie in the faces of all the people the camera catches, whether they (the people) speak any lines or not. The crowd never really turns into the mob that you expect it to, which actually makes this movie more interesting and exciting. The film masterfully avoids that drama in order to get at the underlying decency of all the people. This is a must see for Will Geer fans, as he plays the skeptical sheriff who brings Beauchamp in near the film's beginning, with a crowd already gathering. Set amidst dirt roads, rundown farmhouses, with an intriguing batch of quicksand that is under a bridge, all of which now has probably been paved over, Intruder In The Dust is a real look at a life that doesn't exist anymore.

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.

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.

As a fan of Wm. Faulkner since college, I was especially pleased to see Intruder In the Dust and for other reasons. My grandfather, also named Clarence Brown as was the director, grew up in the Oxford area having been born near there in 1888. We attended a week long family reunion at Oxford in July, 1964 a mere 15 years after filming the movie. It still looked mostly like it does in the film but was going thru a period of civil rights upheaval then as the site of Ole Miss. My recollection is of its being a nice little college town that summer but I was just an 18 year old college sophomore and white. I was just then beginning to see the injustice of segregation and prejudice but still had a long way to go. Anyhow, the movie is well worth watching but the filmmakers must have had to walk a tight rope to get it done there and I would love to know more about that story.

Now days, Oxford is a larger, more modern college town with all the ills that go along with such things and I hope to return again to see how it must have changed socially in the last 40 plus years. Juano Hernandez should certainly have been nominated for an Oscar that year but Hollywood was still to bigoted itself to let that happen. Other Faulkner stories have been filmed so look for them and compare. One of the best was a PBS treatment of The Barn Burner from about 1985 or so starring Tommy Lee Jones. It really captured the intensity of rural Southern whites that Faulkner wrote so incisively about so often.