Matters of Life and Death

“In matters of life and death, a man's vocabulary is almighty small.”

It took me 40 years, but I finally made good on my promise.

One night back in the Eighties, I came home from work and began watching Intruder in the Dust, the 1949 adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel about racism, murder, and injustice in a small Southern town.

Shot on location in Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, Intruder in the Dust has a documentary feel to it, as director Clarence Brown trains his camera on faces and locations that could never be found in a studio backlot.

The film was shot in black and white, with no Technicolor to make things look pretty, and no music to stir up the emotions. They aren't necessary.

I knew I should watch it, especially since I had taken a course in Faulkner in college and was eager to see how his work was adapted to film.

I was tired, though, and not in the mood for anything serious, so I clicked off the TV and vowed that someday I’d sit down and give this film the attention it deserved.

The time slipped by and I forgot about that movie and my promise until I saw it was playing on TCM.

I recorded the film recently and finally got around to watching it last week. And I can honestly say that I have not enjoyed a film this much in ages.

The movie tells the story of an African-American man falsely accused of murder, who is in danger of being dragged out a prison by a racist mob and burned to death, while the few people who believe in his innocence—and are willing to fight for it--race to find the evidence that will set him free.

Segregation was such a force in America at the time the movie was made that two African-American actors were not allowed to stay in the same hotel as their white co-stars and boarded in a private home instead.

Farran Smith Nehme wrote in a 2017 Library of America story that director Clarence Brown read Faulkner’s book in galleys.

Upon reading the novel, Brown, who directed over 50 films, including The Yearling and Angels in the Outfield, witnessed the Atlanta race riot of 1906 as a young man, said “this was a picture I had to make.”

And Brown’s choice to shoot in Oxford was both chilling and appropriate, as 15 years earlier, a black man was dragged out of the Oxford jail and lynched while a jury was deliberating in his trial for killing a white farmer.

The film is brilliant and powerful in its own right, but it takes on a special meaning now as the nation reels from the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man who died while a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for eight minutes.

The killing had sparked protests in cities all over the country, including my own.

It is sad, terrible time in which we live, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and an alleged leader who unleashed police officers on peaceful demonstrators so he could stand before a church and hold a Bible—upside down.

Intruder in the Dust tanked at the box office, failing to even earn back its negative costs. This is disappointing, but not surprising, I’m sorry to say.

People didn’t want to hear about racial injustice back then and, judging by what’s been going around here, a lot of them don’t want to hear about it now.