Intruder in the Dust

This is an odd little movie. It starts with a black man, Lucas (Juano Hernandez) being brought in for murder. For shooting a white man he'd recently quarreled with in the back. Lucas asks a young man he knows, Chick (Claude Jarman Jr.), to speak with his uncle (David Brian) about being his lawyer. The deceased's brother is a rather loud fellow, the sort who can easily gather a mob to carry out their own brand of justice.

So for the first fifteen minutes, this felt like it was going to be an extended version of the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. The white lawyer fighting a losing battle to keep an innocent black man for being imprisoned, or more likely, executed. That's not what we get, though. It's more of a murder mystery, and it's focused on Chick. The lawyer doesn't believe Lucas, but Chick does. He met Lucas when the man did a kindness for him, one which Chick didn't entirely grasp, or didn't respond to well.

The movie takes a few twists and turns. Chick gets help from an unexpected direction, an elderly woman (Elizabeth Patterson) that was meeting with his uncle about hitting a chicken with her car. There's a midnight unearthing of a grave, then a second unearthing of the same grave the next day. We get the bit where the killer is tricked into revealing themselves by announcing the witness is home alone. There's not quite a lynch mob scene, but much of the town does seem to be gathered around the jail for hours, and the angry brother does try to force his way in. Couldn't help noticing all the people waiting were men. The women actually have better things to do than sit around like a pack of vultures.

The movie gets a bit preachy at points, the lawyer trying to explain things to Chick about why the mob behaves as they do. It works better in the ways that Lucas relates to people. The pride he carries, and his refusal to bend on that. All those people may not apologize for being ready to kill him, and he doubtlessly doesn't expect it, but he's also not going to walk with his head down. He won't accept money from Chick for helping him, because that's not why he did it. He insists on paying the lawyer for his help, but also asks for a receipt when he does. He insists on his innocence, but also isn't going to shift the blame to another person when he doesn't know who it was the actually shot the man.