Tarin Wittig
Professor Coleman– American Cinema
October 28, 2020
Pictures at a Revolution
From a diverse cast in In the Heat of the Night to a film based around sexual tension,
The Graduate, to Bonnie and Clyde, a film about two lovebirds committing crime, the films
of the mid to late 1960’s changed American cinema because it paralleled the events of that
time in America as well as establishing a “New Hollywood” thinking and bringing racial
injustice to light. During the mid to late 1960’s, a revolutionary events effect was displayed
in American cinema and was breaking American norms along with a new way of filmmaking
by changing the process in which filmmakers created films to be independent from studios.
Without these events and new ways of thinking, the American New Wave and the
movement for revolutionary films would not exist.
In Mark Harris’ novel, Pictures at a Revolution, he describes the process of five
feature films running for the Oscars and how they birthed the New Hollywood. The film, In
the Heat of the Night, was, what filmmakers thought, a birth to a new nation. However,
actor Sidney Poitier thought otherwise. Poitier believed that it was pushing in the right
direction for more equality but he knew that if he won an Oscar it would “move many black
and white Americans” but he would still be “’the only one’” (Harris 53). Poitier knew that
Hollywood felt they had done enough for integrating in their films after the civil rights
movement only a few years earlier, but they were wrong. In the Heat of the Night sparked a
hope for integration and racial equality in the film industry. One scene in the film where
Detective Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) slaps a white man named Endicott (Larry Gates) to stand up
for himself left audiences in uproars and shock. You “‘could tell how many white and how
many black were in the theater’” based on their reactions to the slap (Harris 336). This film
encompasses the reality of racial injustice in America and displaying it on the screen
sparked an inspiration to seeing more of fighting back for equality. The reaction to the
scene was “‘shock and pure relief’” because it demonstrated the breaking of a toxic norm in
American culture of racism (Harris 336).
Another film, Bonnie and Clyde also added to the idea of breaking societal norms.
