The Spook Who Sat By the Door

Director: Ivan Dixon

1973 / 102min / 35mm

Shot run-and-gun style on the streets of Gary, Indiana (standing in for neighboring Chicago), effectively suppressed for years thanks to FBI strongarm tactics, Dixon’s hell-raising, Herbie Hancock–soundtracked adaptation of Sam Greenlee’s 1969 novel of the same name, with a screenplay co-written by Greenlee, stars Lawrence Cook as the CIA’s token first Black agent, recruited as part of a white senator’s half-assed affirmative-action publicity putsch, who goes rogue at first available opportunity, using the regime-toppling tactics he learned in his training to whip up an inner-city guerrilla army. “One of the great African-American calls to arms… An agitprop call to action across the social divide.” —Sight & Sound

35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress and restored by The Library of Congress and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Part of Fugitive Days