L'intrus

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.

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.

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.

"Intruder in the dust" is unfairly forgotten today.Nowadays almost every movie involving racism,murder,lawyer and infuriated crowd ends up in the court,in an endless trial .This one does not,everything happens in a small south town,or in the country around.It features intriguing scenes ,particularly the one when two teenagers and an old lady open a grave at night to exhume a dead body;even stronger is the scene when the same lady keeps the crowd from entering the jail,without a gun, sitting on her chair while a brute is pouring gas around her.Juano Hernandez is equally efficient in his part of an innocent black man-I've rarely seen so much dignity in this kind of role-.

Also remarkable is the almost complete absence of music,which gives the movie a modern feel.Excellent dialog,with brilliant lines ,towards the end of the movie,between the lawyer and his nephew .This young lad plays a prominent part in the story,which is not surprising,coming from Clarence Brown,who perfectly directed young actors ("the yearling" and "National Velvet")

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.