Reach in the Dust (film)

Movie
German title	Grip in the dust
Original title	Intruder in the Dust
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1949
length	87 minutes
Rod
Director	Clarence Brown
script	Ben Maddow
production	Clarence Brown for ; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
music	Adolph German
camera	Robert Surtees
cut	Robert J. Kern
occupation
	Claude Jarman Jr .: Chick Mallison; David Brian : Uncle John Stevens; Juano Hernández : Lucas Beauchamp; Porter Hall : Nub Gowrie; Elizabeth Patterson : Miss Habersham; Will Geer : Sheriff Hampton; Charles Kemper : Crawford Gowrie; David Clarke : Vinson Gowrie; Elzie Emanuel : Aleck; Lela Bliss : Mrs. Mallison; Harry Hayden : Mr. Mallison; Harry Antrim : Jailer Tubbs; Dan White : Will legacies, Sagittarius;
synchronization

Griff in den Staub (English original title: Intruder in the Dust ) is an American crime drama directed by Clarence Brown from 1949 . It is based on the novel of the same name by William Faulkner , which was published a year earlier. When it was made, the film was considered particularly progressive in dealing with African-Americans and deals with the issue of racism in the southern states . Despite receiving positive reviews from critics, Griff in the Dust became a financial failure at the box office.

action

In the late 1940s in Yoknapatawpha County , a rural district in the state of Mississippi : The forest worker Vinson Gowrie, a white man, was shot from behind and the black landowner Lucas Beauchamp was arrested as a perpetrator. An angry mob of white people gathers around the prison where the African-American suspect is sitting and has already committed to Lucas as the murderer. Lucas asks the white youth Chick Mallison for help, so that his uncle - the lawyer John Gavin Stevens - should defend him on the suspicion of murder. Opposite his uncle John, Chick remembers how his unusual acquaintance with the old widower Lucas came about: When Chick once chased rabbits on Lucas's property and fell into a stream, Lucas rescued him from the water. At Lucas's house he received dry clothes and food. When the grateful chick wanted to give the old man money, the old man strongly refused, which left Chick puzzled because he had never learned to respect black people. Because of his proud, idiosyncratic demeanor and his land ownership, Lucas is hated by many racist whites, who only accept African-Americans as servants and subordinates.

Uncle John takes over the case somewhat reluctantly and questions Lucas in prison, but Lucas remains silent about the important points to the lawyer. In a confidential moment, however, Lucas asks Chick if he could dig up the body of the recently buried Vinson. So Chick could prove that the shot did not come from Lucas's gun. While Uncle John refuses to be exhumed , Chick finds an important supporter in Miss Eunice Habersham, an elderly lady from a good family who believes in Lucas' innocence. During the night, Miss Habersham, Chick and Aleck - the African-American teenage servant of Chick's family - sneak into the cemetery together and want to dig up Vinson. But the coffin is empty. This discovery also electrifies Uncle John, the sheriff and other men, who are now searching the area around the cemetery more closely for the missing body. Footprints lead to a quicksand spot by a stream. Nub Gowrie pulls the body of his son Vinson out of the quicksand. It turns out that the bullet can't come out of Lucas's gun.

In the small town, a mass of white men, led by Vinson's brother Crawford, still surround the local prison. They want to lynch Lucas as soon as possible, but the venerable Miss Habersham has sat in front of the prison and is keeping the men off with her resolute demeanor for the time being. Through a testimony from Lucas, Uncle John and Chick have come to the conclusion that a fraudulent business partner of Vinson must be the killer. Only the identity of the business partner is unknown, which is why John and the sheriff set up a trap: It is announced that Lucas has been released from prison and has returned to his house. The perpetrator would then drive to Lucas's house to take revenge on Lucas and keep him silent. The sheriff and Vinson's father Nub Gowrie wait at Lucas's house, where the real murderer soon appears armed: It's Crawford Gowrie who has his own brother on his conscience, as father Nub is dismayed to discover.

Disbelieving at the white murderer and ashamed of her behavior, the people give up the siege of the prison and Lucas is released. Uncle John asks Lucas why he initially did not defend himself but kept silent - Lucas replies that as a black man he would not have been believed anyway, no matter how he defended himself against the allegations. Chick is overjoyed because he was finally able to settle his "debts" to Lucas for his friendliness when they first met. In the end, Lucas proudly walks his way through the streets of the small town.

background

Clarence Brown (1921)

prehistory

The driving force behind the film was director Clarence Brown , who had been one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most successful directors since the mid-1920s. Brown was personally acquainted with William Faulkner and a great admirer of his works. The subject of the film was also important to him for personal reasons: Brown had grown up in Tennessee in the southern states and had witnessed the bloody race riots there as a youth in 1906 . The director read Faulkner's novel Intruder in the Dust shortly after its publication and immediately wanted to make a film out of it. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's studio boss Louis B. Mayer was initially critical because he did not believe in the commercial success of such a film. The new MGM production manager Dore Schary , a liberal with a penchant for "message films", was committed to the making of the film. Ultimately, the filming rights were bought from Faulkner, who was stuck in chronic financial worries, for 50,000 US dollars. In 1949, the year this film was published, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature .

With 988,000 US dollars, Film had a first-class budget available at the time, especially in view of the explosive issues at the time. For MGM, perhaps the largest studio in Hollywood at the time, the realistic and problematizing style of Intruder in the Dust was unusual. Last but not least, MGM was mainly known for glamorous, apolitical entertainment under the direction of the conservative Mayer. Small towns like in this film were usually shown as idyllic places by MGM. Intruder in the Dust was not the only film that dealt with racism: at the end of the 1940s, a number of problematic films were made, such as Pinky or Tabu der Gerechte , which also addressed such social disputes as a reaction to the National Socialists . With the beginning of the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, this small boom of films ended because they were considered too critical of America. Ben Maddow , the screenwriter of Intruder in the Dust , was persecuted during around the McCarthy era.

occupation

However, the film did not have a major Hollywood star in its cast - at most perhaps 15-year-old Claude Jarman junior , who had risen to become a child star three years earlier under Brown's direction in The Call of the Wild with brilliant reviews . The established western star Joel McCrea was originally supposed to play Uncle John, but he turned it down, so the role went to newcomer David Brian . He had just made his film debut in The Street of the Successful . The audience was joined by well-known supporting actors such as Porter Hall , Elizabeth Patterson and Will Geer . For Juano Hernández as Lucas, this meant his first film role in Hollywood, as he had previously only appeared in Afro-American independent films and was thus still unknown to the broader cinema audience. Intruder in the Dust also immediately earned the 53-year-old theater veteran Hernandez a Golden Globe nomination for Best Young Actor . In the two decades that followed, until his death, Hernández remained a busy character actor in Hollywood, who was particularly noticeable for the fact that, unlike other dark-skinned actors, he turned down offers for stereotypical roles - for example, as a dumb or submissive servant.

Filming

William Faulkner (1954)
Photo: Carl van Vechten

Clarence Brown was shooting on location in Faulkner's hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, with locals from Oxford filling smaller roles and extras. It was shot in real locations, which gave the film additional authenticity. Originally, some Oxford residents were critical of the film's theme, but Brown managed to smooth things over with everyone involved. In the end, the vast majority of citizens were enthusiastic about the visit from Hollywood and volunteered as extras. William Faulkner was in Oxford at the time of filming and regularly overlooked Ben Maddow's script, he praised his work, but also made other suggestions for improvement: Faulkner changed the final scene so that it seemed less sentimental. In addition, the writer helped the Puerto Rican Hernández to get the accent of an African American in the southern states convincingly.

There weren't enough hotel rooms for the Oxford film crew, so many had to be housed with private individuals or at the local university. The dark-skinned actors were, however, encouraged by the city to only look for accommodation with dark-skinned people. For example, Hernández lived in the house of a well-known African-American undertaker while the film was being made.

Adolph Deutsch composed the music for the opening and closing credits, but otherwise Brown did not allow any film music to appear in Intruder in the Dust - the lack of film music was extremely unusual for a Hollywood film of the time. Cedric Gibbons , as MGM chief architect, was in charge of the scene design, the film structures were implemented by Randall Duell , and Edwin B. Willis took care of the equipment . Douglas Shearer was responsible for the sound , Harry Stradling junior assisted the unnamed head cameraman Robert Surtees .

synchronization

The German dubbed version of the film was created in 1978 for a television broadcast by ARD .

role	actor	German Dubbing voice
Chick Mallison	Claude Jarman junior	Jan Koester
Uncle John Gavin Stevens	David Brian	Dieter Eppler
Lucas Beauchamp	Juano Hernández	Hans Korte
Sheriff Hampton	Will Geer	Sigurd Fitzek

reception

Grip in the Dust had its world premiere on October 10, 1949 in Oxford , Mississippi . The New York premiere was on November 22, 1949. In Germany, where the film was never shown in cinemas, Griff in den Staub was shown for the first time on television (ARD) exactly 29 years after its premiere.

When it premiered in the USA, the film received good reviews and was considered one of the best films of the year by not a few critics. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times, for example, that director Brown had made a “brilliant, touching film” that seemed “triumphantly serious, mature”. The film would realistically deal with the racial problems of the south based on a few people; he is a "monument". The actors are outstanding, with Crowther especially highlighting Juano Hernandez in the role of Lucas. Despite praise the film developed - such as Louis B. Mayer had predicted - at the box office for the flop . At around $ 840,000, Intruder in the Dust couldn't even recoup its production costs.

William Faulkner was satisfied with the filming: “I don't know much about films, but I thought it was one of the best I've seen. Mr. Brown knows his medium, and he's made a fine strip. I wish I had done it. ”In 1958 he added in another interview:“ I'm not a frequent movie viewer, but I've seen it. This Juano Hernández is a good actor - and man, too. ”The American film historian Donald Bogle described Intruder in the Dust as a milestone for the roles of blacks in American film. Hernández's "portrayal and extraordinary presence" would still stand out today over almost any other portrayal of African American actors in American film. Kevin Brownlow saw Intruder in the Dust in 1968 as the best film "ever made on the subject" of racism in the southern states. The Lexicon of International Films wrote that the film was "clearly characterized by a humane attitude, presented in a differentiated manner, grippingly staged."

Brown, who also produced the film, fulfilled a personal wish of the heart for himself with the anti-racism drama “Grab in den Staub”, a crime film with southern local flavor only. The result was a very dignified, smooth Hollywood clothing far exceeding, serious work with 'message'. "

- Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary , Volume 1, p. 578