Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Library Video of the Week, February 20, 2012.

Intruder in the Dust, staring Juano Hernandez, Claude Jarmin, Jr.  and David Brian. Directed by Clarence Brown. 1949. Library Call Number: PN1995.9.N4I67 2011.
       From the IMDB database:  Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence. “
          Nominated for two Golden Globes, a Writer’s Guild Award and and winning a UN award, the film, based on a William Faulkner novel, is a hidden masterpiece. Both noirish and progressive for its time, Intruder in the Dust provides an interesting look at white attitudes toward equal rights in the early post-war era.

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