A racial melodrama from 1949. Beating similar story-lines found in To Kill a Mockingbird by 13 years, this tale of a wrongly accused black man of murder is a potent bromide on the South's notion of justice. In flashback, we meet a lawyer's nephew who befriends the man during simpler times. Not giving an inch to the way the youth sizes him up (there's a delicious sequence where he drops some coins on the ground & yells at the much older man to pick them up which he doesn't, just staring the boy down in submission) & gradually gains enough respect for him that he engages his uncle to defend the man from a white mob inching to lynch him as he sits in jail. As much as a polemic on the racial divide, this film also works as a great procedural (a body has to be disinterred to gain evidence to exonerate the accused) where the truth trumps any preconceived ideas of prejudice sending all our players on a path of discovery which had even me floored. Not too many known actors here but a special mention must go to Juano Hernandez (probably the earliest known Puerto Rican actor of note) who plays his role w/quiet dignity & a smouldering sense of pride.
Review of Intruder in the Dust
