The Man

As an African-American educator, I found this movie to be an extraordinary one. I hope to find a copy to show to my students who will participate in this year's Multicultural Career Institute, which is in its 13th year on our university campus. Situated in the Midwest, only 10 percent of the university's 22,000 students are students of color. The majority of the students come from small to large farming communities where few, and far too often, no persons of color live. One of the biggest fears that white America has always harbored is the insane notion that 1) only whites can lead this country and 2) if a person of color is elected to a high-ranking position, then white America will find itself the recipient of vengeance and payback for slavery, racism, etc. This film disputes these notions and allows the viewer to understand America in its truest form.

.....then by all means let me know directly at the above e-mail address so that I may arrange for a copy for you. An outstanding undiscovered classic originally made for TV, but whose controversial content resulted in a theatrical release at the 11th hour. James Earl Jones has never been better, nor has Rod Serling's writing, proving he was just as much a genius working outside of the fantasy milieu (as though he hadn't already demonstrated that with "Requiem for a Heavyweight," etc.). Burgess Meredith excels as a white supremacist trying to stymie the new prez at every turn, and Janet MacLachlan is very good as the concerned daughter whose natural opposition to the Oval Office has her torn over her dad's new presence there.

It's very interesting to compare this movie to the original novel (published a few years earlier) written by Irving Wallace. Wallace's novel was very good but also very long - almost ponderous at times, in fact - offering a much more thorough and very detailed account of Douglass Dilman's experiences as an "accidental" black president at a time when racism was not only alive and well but still very much openly promoted by many politicians in the USA. Wallace's novel revolves to a great extent around Dillman navigating relations with the Soviet Union over an issue in Africa and then defending himself against an impeachment trial pushed by an extremely racist Congressman.

The movie (adapted from the novel by Rod Serling) is quite a contrast. It moves very quickly, almost at a frenetic pace at times. A happy medium between the two might have made for a better movie. The movie is less explicitly racist (especially in its language) and there's no effort at impeachment in this hearing. Instead, the movie's resident racist legislator (played by Burgess Meredith and in the movie a senator) takes the position that Dilman should essentially be left to hang himself politically by being allowed to fuinction as president (which he assumes will happen because he figures Dilman, as a black man, isn't competent enough to be president.) The primary issue here isn't relations with the Soviets but rather relations with apartheid-era South Africa over their requested extradition of a black man accused of an attempted assassination in that country. (Whether in the book or the movie, having the main policy challenge for the first black president focussed on Africa seemed a bit too convenient for pushing forward the racist commentary.) The book leaves it ambiguous whether Dilman will seek the office in his own right in the next election; the movie has him actively seeking his party's nomination.

They both work in their own ways. They're both an interesting reflection on racism in America at the time. The movie has decent performances from its leads - James Earl Jones as Dilman, William Windom as Secretary of State Eaton and Martin Balsam as Chief of Staff Talley, along with the aforementioned Meredith. I would have liked to have seen Windom made better use of. He's an extremely good actor but Serling didn't really develop the tension (and rivalry) between Eaton and Dilman particularly well. (Racism aside the movie also serves as an interesting reflection on a president assuming office who had been elected as neither president nor vice president - which Gerald Ford would do a few years later.)

I thought the most powerful and meaningful scenes were the scenes of Dilman's early presidency, when important discussions are happening in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room around him, but in which his presence is barely even acknowledged by those present. Jones did a very good job of portraying Dilman's frustration with the dismissiveness Dilman was being treated with.

I liked the novel (although it's a long time since I read it) and I also liked this movie (although I haven't seen it for many years until I happened by accident to find it on You Tube this morning.) I do think it could have been better. Apparently Jones himself expressed some misgivings about it, particularly over the limited budget it had (which does give it a kind of lacklustre feel) and felt it could have been stronger. Still, given the times in which it was made it was a fairly courageous move on the part of ABC, who made it at a time when networks were still very squeamish about tackling controversial social issues and who, interestingly, apparently released it in the theatres instead of on television, although it did end up as a movie of the week on the network. (That's the version I saw on You Tube but I have no idea how long after it was released in the theatre it took to be broadcast on the network.)

Not just another cheap, throwaway ABC Movie of the Week, Joseph Sargent's The Man, written for the screen by Rod Serling and based on an Irving Wallace novel, this movie has the potential to be a very good political thriller. The performances are from journeyman to excellent, the dialogue, at times, crackles, and the story is a mixture of the catastrophic and the mundane (the death of the president and speaker of the house being the former and the pervasive racial dismissiveness directed toward James Earl Jones' president pro tempore-to-president is the latter).

Yet.

It's obvious ABC got a higher quality product than they wanted. The Movie of the Week series cranked out one piece of clichéd garbage after another during its 1969-1976 run, and the occasional brilliance (That Certain Summer, Katherine, Duel come to mind) would catch everyone by surprise.

What do you do with something good, when you're regularly paying for crap?

Sheesh, people might begin to expect quality.

So, ABC puts The Man into limited release. The movie looks like a TV flick because it's on a MOTW budget. Probably made $37.26 nationwide. That'll teach 'em to make something good!

But.

I'd put The Man in the box set of post-Twilight Zone Rod Serling work along with the white-knuckled Seven Days in May, the original Planet of the Apes, and some of the better episodes of The Night Gallery. Serling was a great writer, but the trouble with The Man is that it's so starved for time and funds, so shoestrung by lowest common denominatorism from the network, that the movie never gels.

That's catastrophic for the viewer and mundane for the world of networkthink.

I think I can breathe now. The political and racial tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. But this wasn't a sledgehammer movie beating us over the head with a political or racial message, it was very intelligently done.

When the POTUS, the Speaker of the House, and others are killed in a very unfortunate accident, and the VP declines being sworn in due to his health, the next in line for the presidency became Senator Douglas Dilman (James Earl Jones). The initial thought was that the Secretary of State would be the next in line, but due to the Succession Act of 1947 the hierarchy was the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, then President Pro Tempore of the Senate. This thrust a Black man into the presidency for the first time in U.S. history.

Naturally, the implications, expectations, and non-expectations were tremendous. This movie could've gone in almost any direction and that's what we were waiting for as viewers: to see what direction it would go.

The plot thickened as did the agendas once Dilman was sworn in. I think we only got a small taste of both the positive and negative expectations placed upon Dilman by Blacks and Whites. The movie settled in on one hot button issue surrounding the apartheid country of South Africa. It was an intricate hot mess President Dilman had to deal with. He was in a most unenviable position and I think the film (and Jones) conveyed that well.

This was a bold and brave movie for 1972. The dialogue was excellent as was the script. I only wonder if Obama ever watched this?