Intruder in the Dust

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.

A white man is killed in 1940s small town Mississippi. Proud black man Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernández) is arrested for the murder. He asks young Chick Mallison to get his uncle local lawyer John Gavin Stevens (David Brian) to defend him. Stevens would rather stay out of the case which everybody assumes Lucas' guilt. Lucas had helped Chick when he fell into a frozen creek and taught him about something. After a short interview, Stevens is certain of Lucas' guilt but Chick returns to hear him out. Lucas directs Chick to his own gun which is different from the murder weapon. Elderly Eunice Habersham (Elizabeth Patterson) just happens to be in Stevens' office as Chick tries to convince his uncle. Stevens is unconvinced. Chick, black servant boy Aleck and Eunice set out to prove Lucas' innocence.

Chick's relationship with Lucas is one of those big lessons like Scout in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. He doesn't know that he's learning even while he's learning it. I love the Habersham character. The story also gives a slice of small town Deep South pre-civil rights era. The racism turns a bit more towards a murder mystery later on.

"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")

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.