The late novelist Harper Lee was press-shy almost her entire life, especially after “To Kill a Mockingbird” made her world famous. That was her way of avoiding answering one obvious question that weighs on the mind of cinephiles.

“Did you ever read ‘Intruder in the Dust?'”

On seeing the

Clarence Brown film adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel while researching the University of Tennessee alum Brown for a profile I was writing, I distinctly recall formulating how I’d ask Lee the question if I was to ever get the chance.

“How many times did you watch that movie?”

Faulkner beat Lee to the innocent Black man in jail in the Deep South story by a dozen years. Brown, one of MGM’s longest serving contract directors, the studio’s choice for Garbo movies and auteur of such studio system classics as “The Yearling,” “National Velvet” and “Flesh and the Devil,” got his film of that 1948 novel in front of audiences a year later — in 1949.

Another “coming of age” tale from the director of “The Human Comedy” and “The Yearling” or not, America wasn’t ready for “Intruder in the Dust” in the late ’40s.

Lee sentimentalized her coming of age narrative, that of a child’s view of an accused Black man defended by the ultimate “white savior,” Atticus Finch, a lionized version of her father. The adoring, tomboyish Scout was her alter ego in the narrative. The novel became one of the most beloved texts in American literature and the Civil Rights Era release of the Robert Mulligan/Gregory Peck film version was a watershed moment for shifting race relations in America.

Faulkner wasn’t sentimental. Most filmmakers who tackled his novels tended to give them florid, drawling Tennessee Williams touches. Brown made sure his coming-of-age movie didn’t lapse into sentiment or Deep South soliloquies, even as he was casting his “Yearling” star Claude Jarman Jr. as his sympathetic if skeptical protagonist, a witness and grudging “friend” to the “proud, stubborn and insufferable” antagonist, a Black man (Juano Hernandez) accused of murdering a belligerant, racist bully.

Brown & MGM made a Southern Gothic noir, a suspenseful thriller that didn’t blink at the big questions it was asking, a movie years ahead of its time. MGM, run by the ever-cautious, don’t-rock-the-cultural-boat Louis B. Mayer, was a most reluctant partner in this one.

“Mockingbird” may be an emotional Oscar winning classic, influencing generations. But “Intruder” is Clarence Brown’s masterpiece, flinty and blunt and cynical, and not shy about showing racists in their natural environment, trotting out their favorite slur as the ultimate evocation of white privilege.

In an unnamed town (Oxford, Mississippi) in a nameless Southern county in the fictive 1940s “present,” a local tough has been murdered. It’s the buzz of the barber shop, which bristles with racist fury wondering if the sheriff (Will Geer) has “got the n—er” who everybody knows pulled the trigger.

That barber shops empties out when the sheriff rolls up in his mud-covered, one-tire-flat sedan and Lucas Beauchamp (Hernandez) is led out in cuffs. The accused is stoic and inexpressive. But that one kid (Jarman) he fixates on in a crowd of angry white men gets his attention. He wants to see the Chick’s uncle.

That would be the boy’s Uncle John (Brian James), an arrogant, cynical lawyer who wants nothing to do with this case, and makes that plain over Sunday dinner with the family. That’s one reason Chick takes his sweet time passing on Beauchamp’s message. Another is to underscore a point about how even the justice and fair play white folks in town are in no hurry to “save” this Negro. The murder victim might have been a redneck bully. But he was white. Beauchamp’s fate is sealed.

Even lawyer Stevens is resigned to the lynching to come. “Won’t be their first,” he notes, firing up his pipe as if he has all the time in the world.

The boy has history with the Negro, an awkard encounter (seen in flashback) that was uneasy because the boy didn’t know what to make of a proud, self-assured man who treated him as what he was, a boy, and not the “white boy” who expected and received deference from the other Black people he’s met.

Something about that meeting and their “exchange” has Chick feeling indebted to Beauchamp, or at least determined to get a humble “thank you” from him. That’s why he takes Beauchamp’s next and most unbelievable request to heart. With the help of a household servant (Elzie Emmanuel) and a little old lady (Elizabeth Patterson) determined to ensure the sheriff does the right thing, Chick sets out for the fresh grave containing the victim, far outside of town.

Do-nothing lawyer be damned, they’re going to look for what caliber bullet killed Vinson Gowrie.

Everything about this situation seems audacious and out-of-step with its era. But that’s the only way anybody who meets the dignified, self-righteous and unbending Beauchamp could respond and claim their own dignity. .

Even today, the bracing, “They’re doing WHAT?” moments of “Intruder in the Dust” hit you like a jolt as we recognize how things were then and how in much of the country those attitudes have had a revival.

The lawyer will have to admit he was “wrong” about the underestimated but cool-headed Black man’s fate and his innocence. Miss Habersham will respond to the call that only a “white lady” — one of a certain age — can stop a lynch mob.

Characters never cross the line into caricature. We meet the one-armed Gowrie patriarch (Porter Hall, cagey and puzzling) and expect the worst. But whatever rough justice he might have in mind, he’s in no hurry to carry it out. He has his reasons.

The sheriff, played by an actor about to fall into Hollywood’s “blacklist” of leftists, seems as cavalier about Beauchamps’ fate as most everyone else. But give him a chance and he might do his job, political blowback be damned.

Brown manages this with the confidence of a man who grew up in and who knew this world, a filmmaker whose career was winding down and who was willing to take one good shot at saying something important in a movie for “no messages allowed” MGM.

The film whips by, with the odd Wellesian flourish in screen compositions, lighting and overlapping dialogue, with crackling performances and genuine suspense from a story that invites the viewer to sit on a fence, and then knocks him or her off it it.

Yes, the lawyer likes hearing himself talk, but he manages to avoid preaching until the finale. Brian, a Warner Brothers contract player (“Flamingo Road”), was nominated for a Golden Globe for this performance, the highlight of his career coming right at the beginning of it.

Jarman didn’t have much of a filmography beyond childhood. But interviewing him some years back for an anniversary appreciation of “The Yearling,” he seemed like a man satisfied with the immortality that film, “Intruder” and John Ford’s “Rio Grande” gave him.

And the magnificent Hernandez rode the critical acclaim of this film into a career that saw him become an in demand character player right up to the end of his life. Twenty years later his last two films were another Faulkner adaptation, “The Reivers” with Steve McQueen, and a bit part in Sidney Poitier’s “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!”

Brown retired in the early ’50s, donated his papers to his alma mater and even sat for an oral history interview at U-T in the ’70s. When I was looking for expert testimony for that 100th birthday story about him I wrote, I managed to get critic’s critic Pauline Kael on the phone for a quote or two in appreciation of his talent. She struggled to come up with something flattering to say about a filmmaker who was very much a cog in the MGM “system.”

“Have you seen ‘Intruder in the Dust?'” I asked, trying to be helpful.

“Oh yes,” she responded at the prompt. “That was something, wasn’t it?” Totally out of character for the filmmaker and the studio he worked for most of his career.

But he’d already made a couple of classics. With “Intruder,” Brown had the story and the excuse he’d been looking for to make his masterpiece.

Rating: “approved,” with threats of violence, racial slurs

Cast: Juano Hernandez, Claude Jarman Jr., Elizabeth Patterson, David Brian, Elzie Emmanuel, Porter Hall and Will Geer.

Credits: Directed by Clarence Brown, scripted by Ben Maddox, based on the novel by William Faulkner. An MGM release on Amazon, other streamers.

Running time: 1:27