A FILM TO REMEMBER: “MISSISSIPPI BURNING” (1988)

Before I get into this, I want to make mention “A FILM TO REMEMBER” will be a series about films that have reached a milestone anniversary since their origin in being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The articles will contain the film’s plot outline, director, cast, a compilation of trivialities, various photos, movie trailer, critical reception and more. So, let’s start:

We are here to mark the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning”. Let’s take an inside look at the film:

PLOT OUTLINE:

Two FBI agents assigned to investigate the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi. The investigation is met with hostility and backlash by the town’s residents, local police, and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

STUDIO:

Orion Pictures

DIRECTOR:

Alan Parker

CAST:

• Gene Hackman … Agent Rupert Anderson
• Willem Dafoe … Agent Alan Ward
• Frances McDormand … Mrs. Pell
• Brad Dourif … Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell
• R. Lee Ermey … Mayor Tilman
• Gailard Sartain … Sheriff Ray Stuckey
• Stephen Tobolowsky … Clayton Townley
• Michael Rooker … Frank Bailey
• Pruitt Taylor Vince … Lester Cowens
• Badja Djola … Agent Monk
• Kevin Dunn … Agent Bird
• Frankie Faison … Eulogist
• Geoffrey Nauffts … Goatee
• Rick Zieff … Passenger
• Christopher White … Black passenger
• Park Overall … Connie
• Darius McCrary … Aaron Williams
• Robert F. Colesberry … Cameraman
• Frederick Zollo … Reporter
• Tobin Bell … Agent Stokes
• Bob Glaudini … Agent Nash

GENRE(S):

Crime | Drama | History | Mystery | Thriller

TAGLINE:

1964. When America was at war with itself.

The film is known for surveying the geography of racism, shedding light on the dark night of the soul as director Alan Parker operates without depending on flashy visual tropes in this slick, well-acted thriller with subtle performances from Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe and Frances McDormand while nonetheless distorting the facts and looks at the civil rights movement from a strictly white perspective. The film is loosely based on the 1964 Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner murder investigation in Mississippi, it received a mixed reception as the performances were generally praised but the feature became embroiled in controversy. It was heavily criticized by African-American activists involved in the civil rights movement and the families of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner for its fictionalization of its history.

Here’s what some of the critical receptions have been for the film over the years:

Gene Siskel from Chicago Tribune says: “Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe give subtle performances but its Frances McDormand who was the most effective as the film’s moral conscience”

Pauline Kael from The New Yorker says: “The acting is admirably stalwart in a film where it’s garish forms of violence are morally repugnant.”

Desson Howe from Washington Post says: “‘Mississippi Burning’ speeds down the complicated, painful path of civil rights in search of a good thriller. Surprisingly, it finds it.”

Jack E. White from TIME Magazine says: “This is just another Mississippi whitewash giving a cinematic lynching of the truth.”

Roger Ebert from Chicago Sun-Times says: “‘Mississippi Burning’ feels like a movie made from the inside out, a movie that knows the ways and people of its small Southern city so intimately that, having seen it, I know the place I’d go for a cup of coffee and the place I’d steer clear from.”

As you can tell by the critical reactions, the film garnered a mixed response do to the fictionalization of the historical events and its narrow scope with the use of the white savior narrative came with some harsh criticism. But the film doesn’t pretend to be about the Civil Rights workers themselves as to being more of an investigative law and order procedural instead. Parker pushes everything along at a fervent clip, embedded with an admirable cast and noble performances by Hackman, Dafoe and McDormand with character scenes back-to-back with chases or violence that is compelling in depicting a meritable and ethical message of what kinds of currents were in the air in 1964 despite the film’s partisan misrepresentation of the verifiable details in another wise, tense filled, commendable crime drama. But I’ll let you decide…

So, to get a better look at the film, here’s a link to the movie trailer of Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning”:

Here I have provided 12 interesting and intriguing trivia facts (I wanted to keep it limited) about “Mississippi Burning”:

• The film is inspired by the murder by the Ku Klux Klan of voting rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.
• At one point, Gene Hackman decided that he would no longer make more violent films, after seeing a brief and violent clip of his performance in this film (and taken out of context, he thought) at the 1989 Academy Awards. That stance prevented him from accepting a future job as director of “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and almost cost him the Sheriff role in “Unforgiven” (1992), which he reluctantly accepted after being convinced by Clint Eastwood, a role that earned great acclaim, and his second Oscar.
• During the filming of the racists versus reporters scenes on a bridge over the Big Black River near Bovina, Mississippi, two extras were nearly killed by a train when they ventured from a holding area onto a tall concrete-arch railroad bridge. They narrowly escaped injury by huddling on a tiny pedestal on the bridge’s edge.
• Interior shots in the Sheriff’s office, courtroom, and stairs from the courtroom were filmed in the old Carroll County courthouse in Vaiden, Mississippi. Built in 1905, the building was in such disrepair, that crew and extras had to dodge falling bricks during filming. Though slated for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, the courthouse has been demolished.
• Samuel L. Jackson auditioned for a role, but was turned down by Alan Parker, who thought he didn’t sound Southern enough. In fact, Jackson grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• Don Johnson campaigned heavily for the role of Agent Alan Ward that went to Willem Dafoe.

• Filmmakers Milos Forman and John Schlesinger were considered to direct before Alan Parker was chosen.
• A Klansman in a red car with tall fins and white roof throws a victim out of the door in the town square. The car is a 1961 DeSoto, the very last edition of the historic make. Rumors that the Chrysler Corporation (DeSoto’s parent company) decided to drop the line, because of its association with the Klan are untrue. DeSoto’s sales had been steadily declining since 1955, and Chrysler decided that the 1961 model would be its last.
• Many of the extras participating in Clayton Townley’s speech scene, were actual members of the Ku Klux Klan, and used their clan membership cards as ID.
• The news interview clips were filmed by the film’s director Alan Parker, with real locals from Mississippi, and their lines were ad-libbed with only minor prompting. Parker said it was at times an uncomfortable experience, since he wasn’t always sure if they didn’t believe what they were saying.
• Frances McDormand’s character, Mrs. Pell, is based on Connor Price, the wife of Sheriff Cecil Ray Price.
• Alan Parker and his crew whipped up batches of what they called “OMD” or “Old Man’s Dick”. This ugly mix of purple, yellow, and brown was painted on every piece of set, every chair, every table top, every prop. They made up a dye, and dipped costumes into it, everyone’s from the FBI Agents, the white supremacists, and the black civil rights campaigners, who are murdered at the start. Stephen Tobolowsky (Clayton Townley) saw the process first hand, then went to the film’s premiere, and wondered why the stuff wasn’t showing up on-screen. Parker ambushed him afterwards and asked him, “What did you see?”. Tobolowsky said he hadn’t seen “OMD” Parker replied, “I didn’t ask you what you didn’t see, I asked you what you saw.” Tobolowsky suddenly realized his eyes were drawn to the black actor’s skin. “Alan’s face turned a lovely red, and he said, ‘Right’,” Tobolowsky said. The only thing “OMD” didn’t touch was human skin. You watch the film, and the “OMD” is invisible, but it gives everything, except human skin, a dull sameness, that makes your eyes look elsewhere, to human skin, the most important visual in a film about racism.

To conclude, Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning” starts out as a vivid portrait of the Civil Rights era and ends up a cop drama in which vengeful anger is used against racist killers. While the film may be muddled in fictionalize details of its events, it doesn’t strain to present a story based on the facts nor be a documentary but what it evokes more clearly than anything else, is how recently in our past, those certain inalienable rights were routinely and legally denied to African-Americans, particularly in the South. Alan Parker understates the obstinate maliciousness in the feature in a controlled but excitingly and visually arresting, charged with powerful images, sustained effectively with layered noteworthy performances particularly from Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe and Frances McDormand in a gritty, violent, tension brimmed, Jim Crow crime thriller.

NOTE: The article contains sources from IMDb and Wikipedia.

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