Intruder in the Dust

Intruder in the Dust is one of the best of Hollywood's postwar "racial tolerance" cycle. Based on a novel by William Faulkner, the film takes place in a small Mississippi town. Juano Hernandez plays an African-American landowner who is arrested on a murder charge. Resentful of Hernandez' industriousness, the white townsfolk are eager to see him hang. David Brian, the attorney uncle of a young white boy who has befriended Hernandez, agrees to take the accused man's case. The hostile atmosphere reaches a fever pitch, but justice is ultimately served. Intruder in the Dust stands out among other films of its period with its refusal to stoop to any form of condescension towards its black characters or to rationalize the behavior of the bigots.