Newspaper reporter Jack Burden (John Ireland) is assigned to cover the campaign of Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), a small-town yokel running for Treasurer. Burden has been told that Stark is a rarity in the world of politics: he’s an honest man. While following Stark, who is harassed at every turn by his political rivals, Burden realizes everything he’s heard about Willie is true.
Burden writes a series of articles on Stark, who he sees as a decent yet naïve man who ultimately has no hope of winning the election. Sure enough, when the votes are tallied, Willie has been defeated.
As a reward for accepting the assignment, Burden takes a vacation, traveling home to spend time with his mother (Katherine Warren) and family friends, including Judge Monte Stanton (Raymond Greenleaf), the Judge’s nephew Dr. Adam Stanton (Sheppard Strudwick) and Adam’s sister Anne (Joanne Dru), with whom Burden is deeply in love.
Something happens, however, in the months that follow Willie Stark’s defeat: an accident in a school building kills a dozen children, the result of shoddy construction. Which just so happens to be one of the issues Willie Stark was trumpeting during his campaign: construction contracts going to family and friends of the current council members, regardless of qualifications. Remembering his stance on the issue, the public heralds Stark as a voice for the common man, and this newfound popularity lands him a nomination for Governor of the state.
With Burden and Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge) as his advisors, Willie Stark makes a series of informative but uninspiring speeches, not realizing until it’s too late that his nomination was nothing more than a sham, a move designed to split the vote of the “common man” to clear the way for the crooked incumbent to return to office.
Those who set Willie Stark up to take this particular fall, however, come to regret their actions. As it turns out, they’ve only managed to awaken a sleeping giant.
All at once, an angry Willie Stark transforms into a political dynamo, delivering fiery speeches and riling up the “hicks”, who, like him, have had enough of the current administration. Within 4 years, Willie Stark is elected Governor, winning in a landslide.
But he is not the same man he once was; in fact, as his term stretches on, Willie Stark proves himself the most corrupt politician of them all, a fact that grows more apparent to his old pal Jack Burden with each passing day.
Broderick Crawford won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Willie Stark, the political optimist who, before long, lets power and his role as “the voice of the people” go straight to his head. Early on, Crawford plays Stark as a lovable fool, a man who has good ideas but lacks the grace and tact to get them across to the voters. The moment of his transformation (which, incidentally, also comes the day after he got drunk for the very first time) is a tremendous scene, with Willie, enraged by the realization he was just a patsy, delivering a speech that riles up the very people he was meant to corral and placate. Crawford plays it wonderfully, and, like Burden and Sadie, we the audience are happy that Willie Stark has finally unleashed his inner politician.
Willie rides this newfound vigor all the way to the State Capital, where, over time, he’ll make backroom deals with shady characters, doing so for what he calls the “greater good” (this includes the construction of a free hospital that he wants Adam Stanton to run). But as director Rossen shows us, in a hard-hitting manner, all power corrupts, and it isn’t long before Willie Stark has become the type of government official he had initially fought against.
Mercedes McCambridge, in her screen debut, also won a much-deserved Academy Award for her turn as the cynical Sadie, who falls for Stark’s rhetoric a bit harder than most. In addition, Rossen’s expert direction brings an interesting flow to the story: mannered at the outset, frantic in the final act, mirroring first Willie Stark’s humble beginnings, then his meteoric rise.
Even by 1949, corruption of power was a time-honored (read cliché) topic for motion pictures to explore. Yet All The King’s Men does it in a way that never feels like it’s treading on familiar ground. It is a movie that continues to resonate, and is just as vital as ever.
Rating: 9 out of 10
It’s an interesting story, a dash of cinematic history that adds some color to the film’s production. But as legendary as both Ford and LeRoy were, it wasn’t the directors that made Mister Roberts a classic. It was the cast, which featured four of Hollywood’s best at the top of their game.
World War II is drawing to a close, and Lt. Doug Roberts (Henry Fonda) of the U.S Cargo ship The Reluctant (nicknamed “The Bucket” by its crew) has, for months, been requesting a transfer to another ship, so that he can get a taste of action before the war in the Pacific ends.
But Lt. Commander Morton (James Cagney), the Bucket’s ornery, bad-tempered Captain, has no intention of letting a “college boy” like Roberts get the better of him, and continually disapproves his request.
Roberts and the Captain butt heads on a regular basis, with Roberts doing everything he can to improve conditions for the bucket’s crew, earning him their respect. Roberts is also good friends with both Ensign Pulver (Lemmon), his bunkmate and the resourceful, though lazy laundry and morale officer; and Doc (William Powell), the ship’s physician.
When the Captain refuses to give the exhausted crew a liberty, Roberts is forced to make a deal: he will stop requesting a transfer and even quit bickering with the Captain in front of the men in exchange for weekend liberty. But while Roberts may have lost this particular skirmish with the Captain, the war raging on the Bucket is far from over, and not even the Captain’s prize palm tree, a gift for exemplary service, will be safe once hostilities kick up again!
Before it was a movie, Mister Roberts was a hit Broadway play, running for 1,157 performances. The play itself was based on a book of the same name, written by Thomas Heggen and published in 1946. While some dialogue-heavy scenes do have a stagy quality to them, both Ford and LeRoy managed to make Mister Roberts feel like a “bigger” film, shooting on-location in Hawaii and the Midway Islands, with a few scenes set in the Pacific Ocean. This grander tone is further enhanced by Franz Waxman’s score, which ranges from light and bouncy during the more comedic moments to booming and powerful whenever things take a dramatic turn.
The supporting cast features Ford regulars Ward Bond (as Dowdy, the ship’s chief petty officer) and Harry Carey Jr (as crewman Stefanowski), with Betsy Palmer (of Friday the 13th fame) turning up briefly as Lieutenant Ann Girard, a nurse Pulver attempts to romance. Mister Roberts also boasts some memorably funny sequences, chief among them the first night of Liberty, when military police (of several branches of the service) escort many of the drunk crewmen back to the ship. Apparently, they had a very good time (I always thought the crew’s antics, which we only hear about after the fact, would have made a ggreat movie on their own).
Still, nothing upstages the film’s four main stars. Fonda, who also played Roberts on Broadway, was perfectly cast as the title character, giving him both a warmth (when dealing with the crew) and sternness (his scenes with the Captain) that work equally well. William Powell, appearing in his last movie, also delivers as Doc, Roberts’ closest confidante who isn’t afraid to tell his good friend the harsh truth when necessary (he thinks Roberts is doing more good than he knows on The Reluctant, and shouldn’t be so eager to leave).
Stealing the show, however, are James Cagney and Jack Lemmon. Cagney is deliciously contemptible as the ship’s Captain, a character you dislike the moment you meet him and hate even more as the movie progresses. The actor has played some tough characters over the course of his career (Tom Powers in The Public Enemy, Cody Jarrett in White Heat), but Captain Morton is a real crumb, and we hope to hell Roberts eventually escapes his tyranny.
And then there’s Jack Lemmon, who walked away with that year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the likable but hapless Pulver. Pulver talks a big game, telling Roberts and Doc that he intends to make the Captain’s life miserable, whether it be putting marbles in his overhead light to keep him up all evening or throwing a firecracker under his bed. But in reality, Pulver is scared to death of the Captain, and tries to avoid him at all costs; the scene where the two finally come face-to-face is one of the movie’s funniest. Pulver is an interesting character, a guy we genuinely like, even if we’re not sure he’d be a dependable ally when things go south. Lemmon is remarkable in the role, and has what may be one of the best final scenes in a movie… ever!
In that same DVD commentary mentioned above, Jack Lemmon talked of the lasting friendships he forged while making Mister Roberts, how he remained close friends with Fonda, Powell, and Cagney for the remainder of their lives. He credits the three with teaching him about screen acting (though a veteran of television dating back to 1949, Mister Roberts was only Lemmon’s fourth big-screen appearance). He couldn’t have had three better instructors, and based on what Lemmon accomplished in the years that followed, they obviously taught him well.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Three movies that were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but didn't win
1. All The President’s Men (1976)
With an intelligent script (penned by William Goldman) and the steady hand of director Alan J. Pakula at the helm, All the President’s Men takes what is essentially an investigation conducted by two journalists and makes it feel like a political thriller. What started as a botched break-in at the Watergate building - headquarters of the Democratic National Committee - in June of 1972 eventually becomes one the biggest stories of the 20th century. Following leads and piecing together the various clues, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) connect the Watergate burglars with top White House officials, sparking a controversy that would soon force Richard Nixon to resign as President of the United States. Redford and Hoffman are pitch-perfect as the newspapermen hot on the trail of a big story, and the supporting cast, including Jason Robards as Post editor Ben Bradlee and Jane Alexander as one of the duo’s key sources, are equally solid (Robards won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, and Alexander was nominated for Best Supporting Actress). Under Pakula’s watchful eye, not a moment is wasted; every scene in All the President’s Men feels absolutely necessary, and his taut pacing brings a sense of excitement to the proceedings, keeping us poised on the edge of our seats for every second of the film’s two-plus hour runtime.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
2. Gosford Park (2001)
Robert Altman’s unique take on an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, Gosford Park is as much a study of the British class system as it is a whodunit. Members of the upper crust, as well as their servants, gather at the country estate of Lord and Lady McCardle (William Gambon and Kristen Scott Thomas) for a hunting weekend. Among the guests are Lady Trentham (Maggie Smith) and her maid, Mary (Kelly Macdonald); Lord Stockbridge (Charles Dance) and his valet Parks (Clive Owen), and actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), who invited along Hollywood producer Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban) and Weissman’s “Scottish” valet, Denton (Ryan Phillippe). Before the weekend is over, someone will be murdered, and it falls to Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry) to track down the killer. Like many of Altman’s films (Nashville, Short Cuts, etc), the cast he assembled for Gosford Park is beyond impressive; Along with those already mentioned, there’s Helen Mirren, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi, Emily Watson, and Richard Grant, all of whom play members of the McCardle’s household staff. As for the murder, it’s nothing more than a vehicle to shine a light on the differences between the “upstairs” guests and their “downstairs” servants, and how each had their place in “proper” society. The movie is often quite funny (the pheasant hunt had me laughing out loud, as did Stephen Fry’s hilarious turn as the incompetent Inspector Thompson), but it’s the presentation of high society in Pre-WWII England, fueled by Julian Fellowes’ Oscar-winning script, that has ensured Gosford Park a place of honor in Altman’s filmography.
Rating: 10 out of 10
3. The King and I (1956)
The King and I is a difficult movie to review. On one hand, it’s a grand, entertaining musical featuring two performers at the top of their game. On the other, it’s culturally insensitive, relating the tale of a genteel British woman who clashes time and again with her employer. an “uncivilized” Asian king. The year is 1862. Anna (Deborah Kerr), a schoolteacher, has been hired by the King of Siam (Yul Brynner) to teach his many children the ways of the west, including how to speak English. The arrangement gets off to a bad start, however, when the King refuses to build Anna the house he promised her, insisting that she reside in the palace. To further complicate matters, Anna takes it upon herself to help Tuptim (Rita Moreno), a young Burmese woman who was recently “gifted” to the King (Tuptim is in love with another man, and has no desire to become one of the King’s many wives). Over time, Anna grows to love the children in her care, yet continues to insist that the King honor his word and build her a house. As for the King, he is struggling with a potential threat from the West, and turns to Anna for advice. Brynner is intensely charismatic as the stubborn, strong-willed King, and he deservedly won an Oscar for his performance. Equally as good is the always-reliable Kerr, playing the lone person in Siam courageous enough to stand up to the King. The musical numbers are also enjoyable, highlighted by the tunes “Getting to Know You” and “Shall We Dance?” Yet as fun as the movie is at times, it also made me cringe occasionally; several Caucasians were cast in key Asian roles (British character actor Martin Benson portrayed the King’s trusted advisor Kralahome, while American Carlos Rivas played Lun Tha, Tuptim’s love interest) and the scenes in which Anna teaches the King how to act when British Ambassador Sir John Hay (Alan Mowbray) pays them a visit came across as condescending. Yet I’d still recommend The King and I; even with its flaws, it’s a damn fine musical!
Rating: 7 out of 10
