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Intruder in the Dust

Taken on its own merits, Intruder in the Dust is the best movie yet made from a Faulkner novel."—Bruce Kawin

It's remarkable that a film like Intruder in the Dust (1949) could have been made by a major Hollywood studio of that era. Based on the 1948 novel by William Faulkner, it's the story of a dignified black man, Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez), in the South who refuses to be deferential to the community's whites. When he is falsely accused of murdering a white man, he is too proud to make any attempt to prove his innocence when he knows he won't be believed. Chick Mallison (Claude Jarman, Jr.), a white teenager whom Lucas once helped, sets out to prove that Lucas is not the murderer, with the help of his lawyer uncle (David Brian) and a feisty old woman (Elizabeth Patterson).

The driving force behind Intruder in the Dust was Clarence Brown, who had been one of MGM's top directors since the mid-1920s. In the 1930s, he had become acquainted with Faulkner, who worked briefly as a screenwriter at MGM. Although born in Massachusetts, Brown had grown up in Tennessee, and considered himself a Southerner. As a teenager, he had witnessed the bloody 1906 race riots in Atlanta, and had never forgotten them. Brown was an admirer of Faulkner's books, and when he read Intruder in the Dust before it was published, it resonated for him. He asked MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer to buy it. Mayer was convinced it would be a failure and refused. But when the liberal producer Dore Schary, who had made several "message" pictures, took over as head of production at MGM in 1948, he persuaded Mayer to approve the project. MGM bought the rights for $50,000, to the delight of the perennially cash-strapped Faulkner.

To play Chick, Brown chose Claude Jarman, Jr., whom he had discovered and cast in The Yearling (1946) when Jarman was a 12 year-old Nashville schoolboy. Following the success of that film, Jarman moved to Hollywood and attended the MGM studio school. His performance in Intruder in the Dust was one of his best, and one of his personal favorites.

Intruder in the Dust was also a milestone in the film career of Juano Hernandez. A black man of Puerto Rican and Brazilian parentage, he had been a boxer, a vaudevillian, a radio scriptwriter, and a radio and stage actor in New York. His first film role was as a drug lord in The Girl from Chicago (1932), directed by black independent producer Oscar Micheaux. After several small parts in Micheaux films, Intruder in the Dust was Hernandez's first film for a major Hollywood studio, and the beginning of a distinguished mainstream film career. The film earned him a Golden Globe nomination as "Most Promising Newcomer" in 1950.

MGM agreed to Brown's request to shoot much of Intruder in the Dust on location in Faulkner's home town of Oxford, Mississippi, provided that lodging could be found for a company of 100 people. The University of Mississippi agreed to house and feed the white cast and crew, but what about the black actors? The Chamber of Commerce said lodgings would be provided "in the homes of Oxford's colored leaders." Juano Hernandez would stay at the home of a prominent black undertaker.

Some members of the community objected to the story, and Faulkner helped to smooth things over with them. He also helped find locations, and discussed the script with Brown, but because he was under contract to Warner Bros., he could not contribute to it. However, according to Faulkner's biographer Joseph Blotner, he approved most of the scenes, made suggestions for changes to others, and revised the last scene "considerably in an effort to make it less sentimental." Faulkner even coached Hernandez in the local dialect, feeling that Hernandez's "clear and precise enunciation made him sound like a Shakespearean" rather than a Mississippi black man. (from Faulkner: A Biography by Joseph Blotner)

Oxford enthusiastically embraced the film company. Many of the townsfolk appeared as extras in Intruder in the Dust, and even those who didn't turned out at the Lyric Theatre every night to join the film crew watching dailies. The film had its world premiere at the Lyric in October of 1949, with Jarman riding one of Faulkner's own horses in a parade. Although Faulkner hated the hoopla surrounding the premiere, and attended only grudgingly, he liked the final film. "I don't know much about movies, but I thought it was one of the best I've ever seen," he said. "Mr. Brown knows his medium, and he's made a fine picture. I wish I had made it." And proving that he had the observational abilities to make a fine movie critic, Faulkner added, "I like the way Mr. Brown used bird calls and saddle squeaks and footsteps in place of a lot of loud music telling you what emotion you should be experiencing."

As Mayer had predicted, Intruder in the Dust was a box-office failure. Although the film was a critical success, 1949 audiences were not ready for a nuanced portrayal of a complex and unapologetic black man. Dore Schary writes in his autobiography, "I predicted it would be viewed in years to come as one of our best. We were both proven right."

In his essay about the "problem pictures" of 1949, novelist Richard Wright wrote, "Intruder in the Dust is the only film that could be shown in Harlem without arousing unintended laughter. For it is the only one ...in which Negroes can make complete identification with their screen image. Interestingly, the factors that make this identification possible lie in its depiction not of racial but of human quality."

Producer/Director: Clarence Brown
Screenplay: Ben Maddow, William Faulkner (novel)
Cinematography: Robert Surtees
Film Editing: Robert Kern
Art Direction: Randall Duell, Cedric Gibbons
Music: Adolph Deutsch
Cast: David Brian (John Gavin Stevens), Claude Jarman, Jr. (Chick Mallison), Juano Hernandez (Lucas Beauchamp), Porter Hall (Nub Gowrie), Elizabeth Patterson (Eunice Habersham), Charles Kemper (Crawford Gowrie). BW-88m.

by Margarita Landazuri

Out of the mordant material of William Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust," which told a savage story of an averted lynching in a sleepy Southern town, Producer-Director Clarence Brown has made a brilliant stirring film. Under the title of the novel, it opened at the Mayfair yesterday. And without one moment's hesitation, this corner, still shaking, proclaims that it is probably this year's pre-eminent picture and one of the great cinema dramas of our times.

For here, at last, is a picture that slashes right down to the core of the complex of racial resentments and social divisions in the South—which cosmically mocks the hollow pretense of "white supremacy"—and does it in terms of visual action and realistic drama at its best. As a matter of fact, the deeper meanings might be utterly missed by some who should still find this film a creeping "thriller" that will turn them, temporarily, to stone.

And this is because the story Ben Maddow has expertly derived from Mr. Faulkner's novel and which Mr. Brown has put upon the screen is as solemn and spooky a mystery as you'll ever want to see, powerfully pieced together out of incidents of the most electric sort. On the surface, it is a story of a desperate and courageous attempt to save an innocent Negro from lynching at the hands of a mob—a story of how three people, an old lady and two frightened boys, open a grave at midnight and find the evidence that helps to save the man. And it is also, strictly on the surface, a story of shrewd detective work by a young Southern lawyer and a Sheriff in tracing a callous murderer.

But, essentially, this is a drama of the merciless wrench and strain of attitudes and emotions in a handful of people in a Southern town who react to the terrible dilemma that the crisis of the Negro presents. It is a drama of the torturing tensions within a 16-year-old white boy who hates, yet admires, the doughty Negro whose innocent life is at stake. It is a drama of fateful decisions by a young lawyer in the town, a drama of the quiet determination of an old lady who believes in doing "right." And particularly, it is the drama of a proud, noble, arrogant Negro man who would rather be lynched in fiery torture than surrender his stolid dignity.

If these sound like large illuminations to be accomplished upon the screen in the course of a ninety-minute picture that is also action-crammed, you may find the attesting explanation in Mr. Brown's brilliant techniques. Taking his cast and his cameras down to Oxford, Miss., itself—the town frankly acknowledged as the "Jefferson" of Mr. Faulkner's book—he has photographed most of his picture right there in that genuine locale with a sharpness of realistic detail that has staggering fidelity. He has placed his principal characters in stunning relation to crowds, and he has searched their expressive faces in striking close-ups for key effects. Most conspicuously, the director has shunned "mood music" throughout his films. The sounds, which are full of minor drama, are intrinsic to the action and the place.

The effect in such eerie moments as the opening of the grave or the passage of whispered conversation between the boy and the Negro in the jail cannot be expressed in mere language. There is a virtue in the realism of sound to which this remarkable picture will stand as a monument. And the shocking explosion of tinny music from loudspeakers in the crowded square when the mob is gathering for the lynching is as vivid as the vulgar scene itself.

With his cast, Mr. Brown has also accomplished some real creative art, especially with Juano Hernandez, who plays the condemned Negro. The stanch and magnificent integrity that Mr. Hernandez displays in his carriage, his manner and expression, with never a flinch in his great self-command, is the bulwark of all the deep compassion and ironic comment in this film.

Excellent, too, are David Brian as the lawyer who involves him-self and Claude Jarman Jr. as the youngster who first inspires a defense of the innocent man. Likewise, Elizabeth Patterson is a moving symbol of Southern delicacy and strength as the elderly, insignificant lady who coolly defies a lynch mob. Charles Kemper is porcine and brutal as the stubborn leader of the mob, Porter Hall is stark as his old father and Will Geer plays the sheriff manfully.

The crowds and flavor of this picture are as Southern as side-meat and greens. Mr. Brown has truly created for M-G-M a triumphantly honest, adult film.—Bosley Crowther

DMU Timestamp: August 05, 2016 15:53





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