The Intruder

A film about segregation in the American South. Adam Cramer arrives in a small town. He wears a suit, speaks politely and presents himself as the representative of an organisation. The schools in the town have just been integrated and black students are attending for the first time. Cramer's job is to break that. He stays at the hotel, talks to people one by one, learns what each of them resents, and then makes a speech in the square. He tells nobody to do anything directly; he only organises the anger already there. That is what the film shows: the man who sets a crowd moving believes in nothing himself. It was shot in real towns without permission. The crew was threatened in some places and had to abandon a location and move. William Shatner plays Cramer, in one of the most-cited roles of his career. Roger Corman directed. He said it was the only one of his films to lose money; even so he named it as his own favourite. A hard example for anyone who likes films about social questions and independent cinema of the 1960s. For a viewer who wants restraint, the film speaks directly and uses the language of its period as it was.