All the King’s Men (1949): Shira’s Take

Blah blah blah. This was one of those, “Is it over yet?” movies. Unlike Eitan, I actually didn’t know the story at all, which I consider a benefit; if I had, I would have been expecting the ending to come throughout the movie and been even more antsy about it all.

Basically, the movie started out kind of like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington but not as good, and it ended up kind of like Citizen Kane but not as good. I cared so little about every character including the protagonist, Jack Burden (John Ireland), and the at-times-empathetic villain Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford). Willie Stark is a small-town man in the south who just wants the government to become corruption-free (James Stewart in Mr. Smith played the role much more charmingly). Eventually, through a way-too-long turn of events, he gets elected governor. Then, in about ten minutes that are extremely hard to follow (note: what is this Pillsbury thing?), he suddenly becomes the corrupt government official he claimed to hate. This downward spiral continues as his family grows to hate him, his advisors become too scared to quit, and he becomes very dictator-like (Orson Welles is more complex an actor, and Charles Foster Kane is more epic a role). Plot-wise, the frustrating part was how suddenly Stark went from this nice guy from the rural south to a governor at times reminiscent of Joseph Stalin (and with the cult of personality to boot). I just found it extremely hard to believe that corruption and power-hunger happen this quickly.

In the climactic act (probably halfway through the movie), Stark’s son Tom (John Derek) drives drunk and kills a girl. Tom is completely willing to deal with the repercussions of this matter, but his father just won’t let him. And when the dead girl’s father won’t accept a bribe, he suddenly goes missing (and is found dead later, a turn of events we assume to be executed by Stark). I am completely serious when I say that this was the only portion of the movie I found remotely interesting. Note to myself: Joanne Dru looked like Ingrid Bergman! 5/10

All The King’s Men (1949): Eitan’s Take

All The King’s Men holds the dubious honor of being the only Best Picture winner to ever be remade (excepting Hamlet, which doesn’t count for obvious reasons, and Around the World in 80 Days, which also doesn’t count because the worthless Jackie Chan version was merely based off the same, oft-produced source material). Now, having seen it, I feel bad for Steve Zaillian, the director of the 2006 update; first of all, how did the talented writer of Schindler’s List get suckered into recreating one of the worst Best Picture winners we’ve seen so far, and second, how did he (apparently) manage to make a film that was even worse than the original? I ask because there’s a disturbing and frustrating artlessness to rookie director Robert Rossen’s take on corrupt politics in the anonymous state (which everyone watching knows to be Louisiana, since Willie Stark is a carbon copy of the Kingfish, Huey P. Long). A film like Gentleman’s Agreement shows how one can take a simple political parable and make it both accessible and gracefully crafted; All the King’s Men proves that one can take a potentially interesting story about how politics transforms the lives of those swept up by its epic allure and present it as no more than a step by step story sloppily tossed onto celluloid and passed off as something “important,” or, as claimed by its ad, “vital.”

It’s not just the film’s bloated third act — in which we discover that, wow, politics sure does make people do crazy things for money and votes and sex — or its ham-fisted political message or its dumbed-down Machiavellian philosophy that make it a miserable watch. It’s the film’s relentless belief in itself as the most essential message film of its time that really bothered me, and its predictable plot turns hurtling toward painfully obvious and inevitable conclusions (hick gains populist support?! hick sells his soul to special interests?! hick becomes involved with corrupt backhanded dealings?! hick’s onetime journalist confidante becomes jaded?! the film ends with a slow-mo assassination?! ya don’t say!) don’t do much to help its case. Maybe the story has just been told too many times, or maybe I just don’t care enough about Southern politics, but I just couldn’t bring myself to identify with the story one bit. Even the convincing acting of Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark fails to overcome weak, poorly-fleshed out dialogue — which is often interrupted by bizarrely quick scene fade-outs — and weaker direction and cinematography. I would’ve traded in my delicious movie snack (dark chocolate peanut M&Ms) for a hint that the movie yearned to be artwork and not just a recounting of the facts (an act Willie Stark undertakes early in the film, when he is inexperienced and struggling to be noticed), but I’m disappointed. Oh well, I guess the Academy can’t score three years in a row — Hamlet came before, and All About Eve is the next film on the docket. With respect to the efforts of Mr. Crawford and John Ireland, who strongly resembles Jude Law — his replacement in the remake — I give this absent-minded Academy choice a 4/10. It was spared a lower score by a fault of my own: I seem to have irreversably set the miserable low-standards bar at 3 (for Cavalcade), and this film, while rather awful, was not a shocking piece of pure cinematic trash.

By the way, Willie Stark really reminded me of Fred Thompson: a bloated sleazeball, high off ambition but low on ideas, fattened by the deliciously greasy taste of pork barrel politics. I fear for our country if this guy takes off in the polls.