Zanuck Century Fox!

This movie represents producer Darryl F. Zanuck at the height of his powers in old Hollywood.
In the post-war (1945) pre-CinemaScope (1953) era, Zanuck produced some great films that made a mainstream attempt to deal with social issues audiences seemed ready for.

This movie, along with Gentlemen's Agreement (anti-semitism) Pinky (miscegenation) The Snake Pit (mental illness) and Broken Arrow (native Americans as non stereotypes) is middlebrow entertainment for sure, but at the time these were considered daring in their subject matter.

Producer Zanuck was just part of a trend. Other producers like Dore Schary and Stanley Kramer also addressed similar issues in some of their films of the time, (Home of the Brave, The Boy With Green Hair) but DFZ deserves credit for giving audiences something they never saw- sympathetic black characters presented as real people, at home, doing the same things white characters had been doing in movies for years.
Sounds like nothing special nowadays, but then, just a couple of years after Jackie Robinson integrated MLB, this was a big deal.

Ironically enough, if Poitier had been a white actor, he would have been given the standard seven year major studio contract and been an instant leading man, assigned to action pictures, romances and westerns, costume dramas, etc.
Instead he toiled along, not really getting any traction in films until the end of the 50's.

And after the success of The Robe (1953) Zanuck seemed to want more width than depth in his movies. He passed on making On The Waterfront, because it wasn't suitable for widescreen, and the "message movie" trend took a backseat to spectacle for the remainder of the 1950's, with notable exceptions, like Schary's Bad Day At Black Rock.

But No Way Out is one of the best of it's genre, and though a product of it's time, still holds up very well.