All the King's Men

Recently I saw a pretty uninteresting movie, All the King's Men, starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, and Kate Winslet. I wasn't that impressed and I was embarrassed to see that it was actually a remake, I didn't realize there was another classic out there that had won best picture. But when I saw the remake, I was kinda scared to see this version due to the fact that maybe I was just not into the story, but it turned out to not only be a good film, but a great one that had no need to be a remake almost 60 years later.

Willie Stark is a crooked lawyer who decides to run for senator, swearing up and down the people that he is just like them and making crazy promises, he gets elected and finds that it's harder than he realized to keep those promises. Things start to fall apart more and more when his son gets into some serious trouble causing bad press, the people are not satisfied with his duties, and his marriage begins to fall apart as well eventually leading up to a horrific ending to his term when he is threatened with impeachment.

All the King's Men, the original, is a great movie that I would recommend for the classic lovers. The remake, trust me, it isn't worth watching, but in some sick way I am grateful for it, because I would have never had the opportunity to see this film. We have terrific performances and a great story that anyone could get into, not to mention the Oscar praise it got was well deserved. Sit back and enjoy the movie, the classics are always worth it.

8/10

I viewed this film for the first time this past week. It was one of only a few "Best Picture" Oscar winners over the past fifty or sixty years that I had not previously seen. I have found most, but not all, of these films to be absorbing and/or entertaining with the majority deserving of the awards they received. I included this specific film in a personal test that I conducted recently. I initially viewed the current version of this film, which features an impressive cast headed up by Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins. Then I rented this 1949 award winner to compare both versions.

I am aware that when you first see a film or program that you find to be an excellent presentation and then you view a newer version of the same entity, the normal tendency is to find the new version not up to the standards of the original due to the unfairly high expectations. For the test conducted, I switched viewing order of the two versions. I anticipated finding the newer version more rewarding due to the more than half century difference in the two presentations and the fact that Sean Penn and Anthony Hopkins have each artistically created several roles which I have found to be top of the line performances. It did not work out that way in this case. I found the 1949 version withstood the test of time and in my opinion was the superior production. This had to do with several factors, the primary one being that the screen play of the older version seemed to be better paced and the presentation flowed more evenly. I believe this version more closely followed the novel and the depiction of the central character "Willie Stark". The novel loosely based this character on real life Louisiana politician "Huey Long". I concluded that the newer version tried to capture more of Longs' character along with his political successes and failures. In doing so it lost some of the novels flow and impact.

Both versions have excellent casts and the performances given by both Sean Penn and Broderick Crawford (Oscar winning) as Willie Stark are first rate. I consider this version to be a top 25 all time political drama and gave it an 8 out of 10 IMDb rating, but I would recommend both versions for fans of semi-biographical political dramas.

There are lots of movies about the rise of some obscure person into the celebrity life, and the person turns out to be an ambitious and unscrupulous phony. Some of them are pretty good -- "Citizen Kane," "All About Eve." Some are mediocre -- "Keeper of the Flame." This is one of the best.

The acting honors generally go to Broderick Crawford and he's not bad. He's rather like a switch who can toggle either into thoughtful candor or blustering Hickhood. (He used the latter persona to good effect as a New Jersey junk man later.) He also had a third position, the incredibly dumb goof, which he never used after becoming a serious actor, but see, "Larceny, Incorporated" for an example of what I mean.

If there's a problem with the script it's not his fault, although it involves his character. Hung over, still a bit drunk, Crawford steps on stage and instead of his usual boring "tax" speech he gives a redneck-rousing go-getter. And he never changes after that. Rather too quick a transition.

The direction is very good. There's a scene in which Mercedes McCambridge enters the hotel room in which John Ireland has been cooped up for four days in a depressed state. "Whew, lots of smoke," she says. "And lots of whiskey." The scene is almost perfectly staged, with Ireland crumpled on the bed in the foreground and reaching for his liquor out of the frame, while McCambridge busies herself emptying ash trays in the background and staring at her face in the mirror. "Smallpox," she says. (She's not nearly as attractive as Crawford's new girl friend, JoAnne Dru, nee Joanne Letitia LaCock, a name that could have come straight out of Andy Warhol's Factory.) Everyone's acting is quite up to par. It's John Ireland's best role. He was never Hollwyood-handsome with those squished up eyes, that deep hole between them, and that protruding nose beneath.

But the honors really should go to Mercedes McCambridge. Robert Rossen, the director, allows her a few seconds here and there to be unique. When Ireland slaps her face hard, she doesn't cry. She replies with a mixture of contempt and not entirely displeased surprise at having provoked him to violence. And that little speech about smallpox as she compares her face in the mirror to the glamorized portrait of Joanne Dru.

I won't go on, I don't think. If you haven't seen this, you really ought to. So should everyone inside the Beltway. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's been attributed so often to Lord Acton that I'm beginning to believe he said it.

All the King's Men was a gutsy film in its day, and wonder of wonders it still plays this way after all these years. It's probably, with the exception of Beat the Devil, the most ragged film to ever achieve classic status. Directed by Robert Rossen, adapted from a novel by Robert Penn Warren, and strikingly photographed in cinema verite style by Burnett Guffey, it tells the story of the rise and fall of a Huey Long-like politician who starts out as a good guy, if a bit of a bully, and winds up a very bad guy, and even more of a bully, as he takes political control of his state.

There are dozens of things wrong with the movie. It feels rushed, as if edited down from a much longer film. The editing creates an uncomfortable, jarring effect that makes it difficult at times not only to watch the movie but to follow it. It has some dreadful acting among many of its major players, while several of the smaller roles are quite well cast with interesting faces, which creates a tantalizing effect, as if the good stuff, the interesting inside dope stuff that we really want to know about, is too hot for the movie to handle, so we have to settle for a glance, a gesture, a heavy overcoat, and draw our conclusions accordingly. There's a cheap look to the film, not only in scenes where things are supposed to look shabby, like ramshackle farmhouses, but in the mansions of the rich and the governor's office. Nor is there much specificity in the movie. In the novel the state was clearly Southern, while in the movie it could just as well be California or Illinois. And the frenetic pace of the film seems tied to the staccato delivery of Broderick Crawford in the leading role, as if Crawford himself had produced, directed and written the movie to fit his personal idiosyncrasies like a glove.

As luck would have it, these 'wrong' things make All the King's Men work better than a smoother, fancier, more refined approach could ever have done. Its newsreel intensity makes it feel real. The bad performances by relatively unknown actors likewise gives their characters the effect of being actual people who, after all don't always behave or speak as they ought to. In the unattractive sets we see things that look like life rather than movie life, as rich men's homes are not always pleasing to behold, and state capitals and court houses often have a rundown look. Brod Crawford plays his role as a grade B heavy, with perhaps a scintilla more charm, and his bull-necked King Of Alcatraz style of acting suits his character well; and if one finds Crawford too typically a Hollywood bad guy I recommend the documentary film Point Of Order, in which Sen. Joe McCarthy, with no dramatic training whatsoever, could well be Crawford's soul-mate, or at the very least his brother.

Why do these elements work so well in All the King's Men and not in other movies, where a mess is just a mess? I think the political nature of the film made it controversial from the get-go. It probably was severely edited to take out 'offensive' material (i.e. anything that might appear to reflect badly on an actual person). The quick, driving pace gives the film at times the sensibility of a tabloid, certainly not Rossen's intent, but luckily this let's-rip-the-lid-off-of-everything feeling that the movie just naturally has suggests perhaps an even deeper problem at the core of its story than just one crazy man's ambitions gone wild, and as a result the film is in many places suggestive, and seems profound when what lies behind this impression is perhaps a deliberate vagueness on the part of Rosson & Co., which in turn forces the viewer to try to sort things out for himself, using the movie as a series of signposts, and what results is a more profound experience than the film itself: the film one plays in one's mind.

Maybe "All the King's Men" is a bit long in the tooth now, but until "The Godfather" and "Patton" it was the best film ever made!

The selection of Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark was gutsy, since Crawford can -at best- have been considered "good". Somehow, though, Crawford did not play Willie Stark - he Was Willie! Much like George C. Scott did not play Patton - he Was Patton.

The "you hicks" speech was great. Not until the "Patton" speech was there anything better on film.

Essentially, the thing making the film great was watching Willie "grow up" in the sense of casting aside his idealism for power. Turning point is the cemetery scene, when one of the attendees seeks divine forgiveness for not having voted for Willie.

The turning moment was not unlike Michael Corelone saying "I'm with you Pop" when the Godfather was in the hospital. Michael did not mean physical proximity, but that he then "bought into" the business.

In both cases, the storyline is a reminder about Power and Corruption.

Like most movies made from books, there were some changes that did detract from the story (no where in the movie do we learn that the Judge is Jack Burden's father - yet that is so important). Yet, correspondingly, no one can accuse the book of word economy. It is a powerful story, but overly descriptive.

Crawford's change of expression - the beginnings of insight - are classic.

Definitely worth seeing.