Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (October 27, 2025)
Apparently being a Nobel Prize-winning novelist didn't ensure a healthy bank balance in the 1940s, as acclaimed author William Faulkner needed to work on Hollywood scripts to stay solvent. Though based on his 1948 tome, 1949's Intruder in the Dust doesn’t come from a Faulkner screenplay, as Ben Maddow took over that duty instead.
Set in small-town Mississippi, someone murders Vinson Gowrie (David Clarke). Sheriff Hampton (Will Geer) arrests older Black man Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez) as the prime suspect and the locals scream for bloody "justice".
However, it appears Lucas winds up in jail less due to evidence he killed Gowrie and more because he consistently refuses to defer to whites in the manner they expect. Lucas turns to John Gavin Stevens (David Brian) to act as his attorney and this sets the lawyer on a difficult path to fight against the mob and establish Lucas’s innocence.
A blurb on the cover of this Blu-ray comes from a 1949 New York Times review of the film. Bosley Crowther proclaims Dust to stand as "one of the great cinema dramas of our time".
High praise, but Crowther wrote more than 75 years ago. How does Dust hold up in our time?
Pretty well, honestly. Of course the movie exists as a product of its time, but it avoids too many pitfalls that might make it seem like a relic.
It becomes easy to see Dust as a precursor to 1962’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird. While not a popular opinion, I think I prefer Dust, as it seems less “of its era” than Mockingbird.
That stems from the status of the Civil Rights Movement in 1949 vs. 1962. The push for Black equality enjoyed a much more prominent place in society circa the 1960s, and Mockingbird tends to reflect this in a way that makes it feel more dated.
Again, I don’t think Dust comes across as timeless, but because Black rights wasn’t as hot a topic in 1949, it comes across as more balance. Granted, both films hoped to sway hearts and minds, but I think Dust did so in a less overt manner.
Both movies focus on unjustly accused Black men and both come from the POV of younger town members. However, whereas Mockingbird really focused a lot on the social ramifications, Dust more clearly mixes those elements with a basic suspense plot.
Which might make it less endearing to some who prefer the character drama and “slice of life” seen in Mockingbird. I get those perspectives, but I like the way Dust combines crime investigation and racial domains.
Dust’s Lucas comes across more as a real person than Mockingbird’s Tom Robinson does. Tom feels more like a symbol whereas Lucas turns into a pretty full-blooded and complex character.
As the catalyst for his uncle’s involvement, Steven’s nephew Chick Mallison (Claude Jarman Jr.) winds up as an active participant in the story, whereas Mockingbird’s much younger protagonist Scout Finch exists more as an observer. This doesn’t make one approach objectively superior to the other, but I like the more dynamic roles of Dust.
Chick, Lucas and Stevens get unlikely allies in this quest via elderly Miss Haversham (Elizabeth Patterson) and Black teen Aleck (Elzie Emmanuel). Though potentially cliché, they add some pizzazz to the proceedings.
Clarence Brown directs Dust in a pleasantly matter of fact manner that avoids sermonizing or aggressive propaganda. While the movie makes its anti-racist view clear, it doesn’t beat the viewer over the head.
Dust drags occasionally, especially in its middle section. Still, most of it works well and it turns into a largely engaging socially-conscious crime drama.
