The way Hernandez plays him - superbly - there's always something goading and accusatory about his deliberate speech and watchful gaze and big-shouldered stride. Rising above them all is Lucas, a proud African-American landowner who carries himself like gentry. This director is a master at conjuring atmosphere from evocative landscapes and from faces that reflect the bifurcated soul of the South. Brown uses his homespun ensemble to convey the way a community breeds attitudes about race and crime in its citizens' bones. Sometimes nonprofessional casting can be lazy or stuntlike, but not here, not for one second. A chiseled face at a barbershop grabs your attention like a Walker Evans portrait, only to startle you with a racial epithet. Gifted actors like Will Geer as Sheriff Hampton and Porter Hall as the Gowrie patriarch mesh seamlessly with nonprofessional bit players and extras. Gowrie - when do you reckon you'll get started?" She stops at Crawford and asks, with skin-crawling expectancy, "Well, Mr. The camera moves with a mother as she strides through the masses with her child in her arms.
In the scariest sequence, hordes of country people seem ready for a holiday parade as they flock to the town jail, waiting to see what Crawford Gowrie (Charles Kemper) will do to Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez), the black man accused of killing Crawford's brother, Vinson (David Clarke). They emit a horrifying impatience and a blinding appetite for vengeance. In this film, Brown, shooting on location in Oxford, Miss., works on his extras like a pacemaker. Most crowd scenes in movies have bum tickers. "Intruder in the Dust" will move or enthrall anyone of any race who has ever rebelled against family traditions as an act of conscience - or witnessed a mob gathering heat.
In the words of "Invisible Man" author Ralph Ellison, "Intruder in the Dust" shows a white boy recognizing in a black man "virtues of courage, pride, independence and patience that are usually attributed only to white men." Comparing "Intruder in the Dust" to three other race-themed movies from 1949 ("Pinky," "Lost Boundaries" and "Home of the Brave"), Ellison said it was "the only film that could be shown in Harlem without arousing unintended laughter, for it is the only one of the four in which Negroes can make complete identification with their screen image."
#Intruder in the dust movie archive
(Warner Archive DVDs are made on demand through .)
Long out of print, this MGM milestone has just entered the Warner Archive Collection. It combines a coming-of-age fable and a detective story with an acute dissection of tribal beliefs and herd mentality. It's about the American experience of growing up by crashing through the precepts and prejudices of your town, your state, your region - and your family.
#Intruder in the dust movie movie
It's not a message movie about racial injustice. at his sensitive best), his Black friend, and a courageous white spinster believe in Lucas and prove that a dedicated few can defeat the racist rabble when justice is on their side.Hollywood never provided a richer picture of the Jim Crow South than Clarence Brown's "Intruder in the Dust," a fresh, inspired adaptation of William Faulkner's 1948 novel. Black farmer Lucas is assumed to be guilty of murdering a white man, and a lynch mob hovers. We salute him for his service to the film community and his unwavering commitment to the arts with a moderated conversation and screening of Intruder in the Dust (1949).Ĭrafted by six-time Oscar nominee Clarence Brown, this classic story of racial injustice, adapted from William Faulkner’s novel, is also a suspenseful murder mystery and a complex morality tale of the Deep South. Jarman’s exceptional life is chronicled in a recent book My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood. According to those who came before and after, there would be no San Francisco Film Festival without him. The longtime head of the San Francisco Film Society during its glamorous middle years (1965-1980) – made especially famous by day-long tributes to Hollywood legends and Board president Shirley Temple Black – Claude Jarman was also an accomplished child actor who worked with several legends, including the great John Ford ( Rio Grande, 1950).