by Chris Marshall:
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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