Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Oscar Project #22: All the King's Men (1949)



I went into All the King’s Men knowing that it was loosely based on the life and career of Huey P. Long, so I was more than a little confused when I saw how positively he (well, Willie Stark, the main character of this movie) was being portrayed in the first half of the movie. He was this honest man who cared about the people. Of course, the corrupt bigwigs made life as difficult as possible for him, and he lost.

But Willie Stark is no quitter. After being defeated in his run for city council, he studies law on his own, gets his degree, and starts his own practice. He’s a huge success, and everybody loves him. He’s willing to fight for the common man.

There’s bad news on the horizon, though. Those same fatcats who held him down and harassed him now want to use him for their own benefit. There’s a challenger who’s gaining lots of support, and they need a patsy to siphon off votes from the competition, clearing the way for their guys to win again. They call up Willie, knowing there’s no way he can win on his own. He agrees, but he doesn’t know he’s been set up. He begins his candidacy once again.

And once again, he is defeated by a narrow margin. This time, though, he’s learned something. He now knows how to win votes and how to get elected (hint: it involves pandering and bribery). Stark still has the greater good at heart, but now he’s willing to sacrifice his morals to get into a position to help. By the time the next election rolls around, he is an unstoppable force, and he’s elected in a landslide. Willie Stark is now the governor of Generic State.

That, in a nutshell, is the story. I imagine it’s fairly common in real life. Most politicians aren’t evil; they get into politics, presumably, to do genuine good. But somewhere along the way they realize that, if they want to stay in office, they have to change some things. Maybe they switch their vote to stay in the good graces of a lobbyist. Maybe they make more promises than they can actually keep. It’s the nature of the beast.

All the King’s Men’s central message is that it’s easy to have the desire to do good, but it’s hard to actually follow through with it once you get a taste of power. Willie Stark didn’t start out as a bad man, but once he found himself in a position of authority, he was ready to keep his seat by any means necessary. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, his run was cut short. If you know the real life story of Huey Long, then you know what happens here.

I should also point out that this film is not solely about Willie Stark. It also focuses on a journalist who gives up his job to help Stark, believing him to be a man with noble ambitions. As Stark began to change, though, the journalist was also put in the unpleasant position of fudging on some of his own beliefs. Such is life.

Finally, there was also a love story forced in there, but it felt so minor compared to the rest of the events taking place. Maybe it was given a more central role in Robert Penn Warren’s novel (which I haven’t read). Here it seemed like an unnecessary addendum. It did, however, give ample opportunity for the love interest to display one of the most maddening tropes of 1940s movies.

Here’s how it works. The woman is hysterical because, you know, women, right? They’re strange and bizarre creatures who can’t keep it together in stressful situations. But the only way they know how to express their dismay is to avoid looking at the man. He grabs her and forces her to pay attention to him, but she’s not so easily cowed. She keeps turning her head from side to side to avoid the pernicious male gaze. It’s all very silly looking, but it happens three times in this movie alone. The picture alongside this paragraph shows what I’m talking about.

This movie is a fitting end to the decade, really. There were a couple of masterpieces in the 1940s, but most of the Best Picture winners fell into the “pretty good” category. I didn’t hate any of them, but at the same time, I wasn’t in awe of any of them either (Rebecca and Casablanca excepted). I hope that’s the case moving into the 1950s. I’m not banking on it, though.

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