User Reviews

Simply put, this is a great detective film. Black Lucas Beauchamp (played by Juano Hernandez) is accused of murdering a white man, shooting him in the back. From the jail cell, He tells the town lawyer, John Gavin Stevens (played by David Brian) he didn't do it. So who did and how do they go about figuring who did it? A taut story line that works throughout the film despite the powerful subtext of Southern racism, where most citizens would just as soon lynch Lucas Beauchamp.

But John Stevens, Chick Mallison (as played by Claude Jaromon, Jr,) Miss Eunice Habersham (played by Elizabeth Patterson) and Aleck (played by Elzie Emanuel) persisted in doing what needed to be done, however nervous they might have been doing it. (Digging up a grave in 1949 was a serious crime, especially if a Black kid (Aleck/Elzie Emmanuel) was involved. But they persisted and endured.

It doesn't hurt that the film is an adaptation of a Faulkner Novel with the same title. Perhaps with black and white cinematography, you can't go wrong, and they certainly didn't. The tension of the mob scene--no Hollywood extras but native inhabitants of Oxford Mississippi (otherwise known as Yoknapatawpha County) played for reality and cinéma vérité. This film adaptation rightfully belongs in the realm of Classic.

While "To Kill a Mockingbird" seems a modern update of the story, the story still is as old as time it would appear. "There is a line between white and black--they can't see us and we don't want to see them." (A paraphrase.) That was true then, and it is still true today. When the Trumpster said "ObamaCare was a disaster" he meant "Obama was a disaster" and he was speaking to the David Duke (KKK) element of racist America that voted for the Trumpster.

The movie is available on YouTube and is certainly worth watching.

This story of a black man (Juano Hernandez) falsely accused of shooting a white man in the back and about to be burned to death by a sullen crowd of Southern gentlemen, is considerably better than I'd remembered.

It's based on a story by Nobelist William Faulkner, known to Ernest Hemingway as "old corn-drinking mellifluous." Faulkner was a Mississippian and was not your garden variety liberal, not even Mississppi's version of "liberal." He always blamed slavery for the South's racial problems, never the South. And in one of his short stories, when a black man is being hustled into a car to be taken off and lynched, someone in the crowd interferes and tries to stop it. The black man in the car, hysterical with fear, lashes out and strikes his would-be rescuer. The rescuer belts him back.

I'm nobody's idea of a literary scholar but I rather liked Faulkner's early work, like "Mosquitoes." The writing was precise, evocative, and often funny. Later on, he became wildly experimental and a little glum, leaving me somewhere in the dust myself.

In any case, this story is nothing like the usual Hollywood fare motivated by white guilt and box office. Hernandez' character is proud -- too proud. He won't beg for mercy or help. He's too dignified to desire sympathy. He refuses to explain to his lawyer, David Brian, why or how he came to be standing over a white man shot in the back, and holding a smoking pistol. That's taking pride too far. Pride is always impractical but it usually doesn't jeopardize one's life. And Hernandez is no better or worse than any other black man in the South of 1926. He's not Sidney Poitier showing off his discernment and impeccable credentials.

The white folks aren't spared either, but neither are they denied humanity. Porter Hall is the first redneck peckerwood we get to meet and he looks the part, shabby, unshaven, angry, and armed. But he weeps over his murdered son, and he is amenable to reason.

It's a complicated murder mystery with racial overtones. I don't know why it's not as well known as some of the other films of the period that dealt with prejudice. Clarence Brown and his photographer have included some shots that are almost arty; two white hands and two black hands gripping the same bars of a jail cell.

I admired it because it depicts a community in which no one is a perfect type of anything, a characteristic that is something called verisimilitude because it resembles real life.

Having read the William Faulkner novel and now seen the movie version twice, I have to admit Intruder in the Dust leaves me a little underwhelmed. Perhaps it's the lack of real tension as well as that of a music score (though it's interesting that a movie made in the late '40s would-except for the beginning and end credits-have no score at all since I always thought that started in the '70s). I personally found the novel a bit pretentious with all the run-on sentences. The most tension for me came when one of the murdered man's brothers poured gas near an old lady's rocking chair in the building that's jailing accused man Lucas Beauchamp and started lighting a match only to blow it out when that lady (Elizabeth Patterson) refused to move an inch. Other scenes, like the digging of the grave, seemed to take too long. Other than that, I did like the performances of Claude Jarman, Jr. as the teenage boy who's trying to pay back Lucas for saving him a few years ago, David Brian as the lawyer uncle of Jarman reluctantly defending Beauchamp, and Juano Hernadez as the accused man who bows to no one. This being Black History Month, I'd also like to mention other performers of color to appear here: Julia S. Marshbanks as Beauchamp's wife, John Morgan as a black convict, and Elzie Emanuel as Jarman's friend. And I recognized Will 'Grandpa Walton' Geer's voice as the sheriff. I guess what I really found a little puzzling was, when the truth came out, everyone seemed to just walk away as if nothing happened. The fact that Jarman and Brian provide some explanation at the end makes the movie somewhat satisfying. For all that, I guess I'm recommending Intruder in the Dust. P.S. I'd also like to mention that two of the performers-David Clarke and Harry Antrim-were both born in the same place I was: Chicago, Illinois.

It's pretty surprising that this wonderful film was made in 1949, as Hollywood generally had its collective heads in the sand concerning black and white issues at that time. The film deserves strong kudos for taking this stand, for having exceptional acting from its mostly lesser-known cast and for the super-intelligent script that doesn't insult the audience or take the easy way out when it comes to white racism. Plus, with the movie's rather modest budget and fast running time, it does an amazing job!

Juano Hernandez (an exceptional actor who played supporting roles in many films of the era) is a proud black man who is accused of murdering a white man in the South. The crowd could really care less about the details--they are just hell-bent on a hanging. And, despite his commitment to the law, the one lawyer in town who has agreed to defend him also assumes he is guilty and doesn't really want to know the truth--just delay the hanging until they could try and convict him and then have a LEGAL hanging! Fortunately, a young white man (Claude Jarmin) begins to wonder about Juano's innocence and begins seeking out the truth. At this point, the best character in this wonderful drama is introduced--played by Elizabeth Patterson (the old lady who later played Mrs. Trumbull on I LOVE LUCY). She single-handedly steals the show as the white person with not only a conscience but the will and determination to stand up for the black man. At one wonderful point in the film, a mob is trying to push past her to get to the prisoner to kill him, but she stands very firm and forces them to back down. There is a lot more to this rather complicated but intelligently written story, but I'll leave it to you to see it for yourself. See it with your kids if you have a chance--it will open up some amazing dialog about how far race relations have come in the last 50 years.

By the way, apparently 1949 was a good year for Hollywood finally addressing race prejudice head on, as Twentieth-Century Fox also released "Pinky"--an equally effective and strong film about racism, interracial marriage and even rape! See both films if you can. Unfortunately, "Storm Warning" was also made that year and while it was about the KKK, it pulled ALL its punches and the studio held the film two years before finally releasing it.

Both "Intruder in the Dust" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" are films about a falsely accused black man charged with murder in the deep south. Of the two I think "Intruder" gets the nod as the superior picture. Unlike "Mockingbird" which is set in the early 30s, "Intruder" sports a contemporary date of 1949 when the film was made. It also has the advantage of being filmed on location in Oxford, Mississippi, the hometown of William Faulkner, author of the novel of the same name, on which the film is based.

In "Mockingbird," a black man named Robinson is falsely accused of rape by an unstable white woman, backed up by her racist father. But in "Intruder," the circumstances are more complicated. The accused is Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernanedez), a black landowner, both a bit odd and decidedly proud, who comes off much more as a multi-dimensional character than the saintly Robinson.

When Vison Gowrie, a white lumberman, is killed, it's immediately assumed that Beauchamp is the guilty party, as he is found standing next to Gowrie's body, with a smoking pistol in his hand. In both films, an attorney becomes involved in each case in an attempt to save the accused. Atticus Finch as depicted in Mockingbird is a little too liberal for the 1930s setting and comes off as a one dimensional idealist.

But in Intruder, the defense attorney, John Gavin Stevens (David Brian) is more realistic than an Atticus Finch-he's already assumed Beauchamp Is guilty and it's up to his nephew Chick (Claude Jaman Jr.) to convince him that he might be wrong. Stevens even goes so far as advising Beauchamp that he will attempt to get the venue changed, have him plead guilty and hope to avoid the death penalty by throwing himself at the mercy of the court.

Both films depend on white characters with "hearts of gold" to save the day. Finch is the likely candidate given his ultra-liberal credentials. But in Intruder Chick is the one who takes an interest in Beauchamp after the proud black man saved him from drowning in an icy creek when he was younger and shows him kindness by giving him a new pair of clothes back at his cottage.

In the flashback in which Chick relates the story of how Beauchamp saved him to his uncle, Chick offers to pay Beauchamp for his troubles but the proud man refuses. In a critical scene, Chick throws the money he offers him to the floor and later has an epiphany realizing he was guilty of hubris. So when he decides to help Beauchamp by honoring his request to bring his uncle into the case, in some measure this was the teen's act of atonement for his prior arrogant and racist behavior.

Despite its overarching verisimilitude, Intruder suffers from a major far-fetched plot point. This is when Chick decides to dig up Gowrie's body as suggested by Beauchamp, who begs him to check the bullet in the dead man's body in order to confirm that it was not fired by him. Accompanying Chick is an unlikely duo consisting of the elderly spinster Miss Habersham (Elizabeth Patterson) and Chick's black friend Aleck (Elzie Emanuel).

Despite Chick's uncle telling him that it's a crazy idea he goes and does it anyway, only to find that the body is missing from the casket. If that isn't ludicrous enough, when Sheriff Hampton (Will Geer) is informed by Chick as to what occurred, he decides to confirm Chick's story by exhuming the body without a warrant. Now do you believe something like that could ever happen?

Both Mockingbird and Intruder feature a mob that makes an attempt to lynch the falsely accused black man. But the Intruder mob seems less populated with stereotypes, maybe because real people from the town of Oxford were used as extras during filming. It just looks more realistic despite the melodrama of the scene in which the brother of the deceased, Crawford Gowrie (Charles Kemper) pours a can of gasoline at the feet of Miss Habersham, while she's knitting and guarding the jail where Beauchamp is locked up.

Intruder remains a groundbreaking film not only in its depiction of Beauchamp, magisterially played by Juano Hernandez (paving the way for such actors as Sidney Poitier) but in its refusal to sugarcoat the underlying racism especially in the area of the deep south. But Faulkner wants us to accept a more nuanced view of his hometown-that not everything was black and white.

In addition to the complex Beauchamp, the father of the deceased, Nub Gowrie (Porter Hall) who starts off seeking vengeance, ends up using his reason to discover the true identity of the man who murdered his son. On the other hand, Sheriff Hampton might be a little too much of a fanciful sympathetic character, bent on seeking justice despite the obvious conflict with those with a racist agenda.

Intruder in the Dust oddly concludes with the happy ending of the exoneration of a falsely accused black man. This happened rarely in the deep south but there is an account of a black man being acquitted by an all-white jury in Mississippi in 1919. Despite the inherent racism of the times (which is on display throughout the film with the explicit use of the n-word by multiple characters), Faulkner also goes out of his way to suggest that the relationship between blacks and whites was in some measure interdependent in his part of the world.

The interplay between these conflicting sentiments stamps the film with a heady verisimilitude despite the unconvincing central plot point.

Had it not been for To Kill A Mockingbird, this movie would be much more famous. Had it not been for Gregory Peck as Addicus Fitch, the acting here would be much more lauded. Had it not been for William Faulkner, perhaps To Kill a Mockingbird might never have been written in his shadow.

I found this movie to be sadly familiar because it showed me that one of my favorite movies, To Kill a Mockingbird, may not have been as original as I'd always thought it was. Perhaps it was inspired by this very similar movie. Oh, the "whodunnit" is different, but the underlying story, a lone righteous "white" attorney against a white Southern town defending a Black man is all too familiar. And, written by a woman, Mockingbird concentrates on rape, the ultimate betrayal to a woman while this movie concentrates on brother against brother hatred, the rape a man feels by fraternal betrayal.

There's not the depth of Mockingbird here. Not the comfort that Addicus brings with his presence. So you're just left with the sadness that, whether she intended to lift the plot from this movie or not, Harper Lee's Mockingbird reflects. Nothing changed in that 10 or so years since the time she may have read Faulkner's book and saw his movie while in college in Alabama and unconsciously or not took most of it as her own in later years. Nothing changed in race relations and some may say nothing has changed even now, these many years later.

It's all too sadly familiar, and one wishes there were an Addicus of our day to make it all right. Where Mockingbird leaves you with hope of that, rocking in the arms of Addicus and waiting for a morning of better times, this movie leaves you just sad that pride from Black people might equal or better the pride of White people. But pride from either is no answer at all.

Rather, it's the answer of Addicus we need, comfort that we are all flawed and that in our frailty we should have mercy, not pride, when facing each other in our differences.

Miserable film. Not even to be compared in one breath with "To Kill a Mockingbird," or "In the Heat of the Night."

Yes, there is racial prejudice but the film is at most ridiculous.

Come now. Would you really have Elizabeth Patterson, of all people, guarding a jail so as to avoid a lynching? Patterson, in her day, played everyone's mother and was the landlady in "I Love Lucy" before Fred and Ethel Mertz bought the building.

Imagine exhuming the body so that it will not come out that the black man's gun killed a white man?

Claude Jarman Jr., who was so fabulous in 1946's "The Yearling" appears in this mess. He still had those sad eyes. My eyes would be sad too if I appeared in this awful film.

To me, this was nothing more than a Faulkner flop all the way.