No insight.
Added 7/11/2009
Great performances, especially by Broderick Crawford, can't really save this movie, which doesn't give any insight into why things happened the way they did. Without knowing why the main character becomes corrupted, it's just a downer of a movie, an overlong cliche.
Meet the new boss, same as the old. Or, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. Or, to defeat the machine, you must become the machine.
That's about it.
The only extras on this 2006 release are just promos for the Sean Penn remake.
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Powerful, Dismaying, Heartrending, High Tragedy
Added 3/18/2009
All the King's Men
(This review discusses important events in the movie. It should not be read by anyone who wants to experience this film, knowing nothing in advance about what will happen. CC.)
The title, "All The King's Men," comes from the nursery rhyme, "Humpty Dumpty."
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."
The identity of the original Humpty is unknown, but the rhyme beautifully fits the film. The "king," Willie Stark, has a tremendous fall, both in character and fortune. His men can't put him together again, morally or physically. Indeed, other characters, both friends and foes, also fall. The movie is high tragedy, in both the gravity and the depth of the falls.
In ordinary life, the word, tragedy, commonly means an event, like an auto accident, evoking pity and fear. In fiction, it means a particular kind of plot. In tragic stories, characters fall from happiness to misery, thanks to a fatal collaboration between their flaws and the course of events. The audience feels pity, from the loss of good; and fear, from the triumph of bad.
Many people avoid tragic stories, because of the conflicting emotions they produce: love of the characters' goodness vs. fear and hatred of their evil. But this mixture of good and bad makes tragedies more realistic and moving, since we who watch are such mixtures ourselves.
As several Amazon reviewers have noted, the action in "Willie Stark" strikingly illustrates the famous maxim: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." At the beginning, there was much good in Willie, and little apparent evil. By the end, this ratio is reversed. Why is the initial good so easily corrupted? Where did the evil, which dominates the middle and end of the story, come from?
In the first scenes, Willie shows many desirable qualities: exceptional intelligence, courage, perseverance, honesty, sympathy for the powerless. Moreover, he is accurate, alert, articulate; careful, considerate, concise, courteous, creative; decisive, determined, diligent, direct, discerning, discreet, dispassionate; effective, empathic, energetic, enterprising, expressive; fair, farsighted, firm, frank; generous, gentle, great-hearted. (And this sentence includes only virtues whose names begin with the letters, A - G.)
By the end of the movie, he has often been abrupt, adulterous, aggressive, amoral, antagonistic, anxious, argumentative, arrogant, avaricious; belligerent, biased, bitter, bloodthirsty, boastful, brusque, brutal; callous, casuistical, cavalier, censorious, coarse, cocksure, combative, contemptuous, covetous, crafty, cruel, cunning; deceitful, designing, destructive, devious, dictatorial, disruptive, dissipated, dogmatic, dominating; envious, exhibitionistic; fanatical, fatuous, fickle, foolish, fretful, furtive; grandiose, greedy, grim, grouchy.
In the first third of the screenplay, Willie's attractive qualities dominate. In the last two-thirds, his unattractive qualities dominate. It's as if, during the interval between his unsuccessful, first race for governor, and his successful, second race, he has "sold his soul" to power, whatever the moral cost. Such a "pact with the devil," or with the "forces of evil," is a frequent theme in tragic drama.
On Google, perhaps the most quoted line from the film is Willie's belief that "man is conceived in sin and born in corruption." He uses this idea to justify his own evil conduct, claiming that his opponents would be, or have been, just as evil for selfish ends, whereas the evil he does is for the public good. The quoted line is quite similar to Verse 5 of Psalm 51 in the Old Testament. It reads, in the King James Version (the one Willie would have grown up on), "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." But how differently Willie and the psalmist respond to the same idea! Willie asserts it, to justify doing evil. The psalmist asserts it, as requiring forgiveness and renewal. In Verse 10, he writes: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."
All the main characters in the film are defined largely by their response to the substantial presence of evil in human nature. Two of them respond in part by deliberately taking a human life. The elderly, aristocratic Judge Stanton, after resigning as attorney general in Willie's administration, becomes a powerful supporter of Willie's impeachment. Willie obtains proof of ancient, grievous misconduct by the Judge, but offers not to expose it, if the Judge will stop supporting the impeachment. The judge rejects the offer, ends the meeting, and kills himself (off camera) minutes later. Does he act from shame? family pride? bitterness? executing justice on himself? falling nobly on his sword? We don't know. Instead of suicide, I wish he had acknowledged his misconduct to God and the world, praying with the psalmist for a clean heart and a right spirit. No one is good enough or bad enough to dispense with this prayer.
The Judge's nephew, Dr. Adam Stanton, though very uneasy about Willie's tactics, had agreed to direct the huge, free, public hospital that Willie plans to build. But Adam now knows that Willie threatened to expose his uncle, and that his sister, Anne, helped Willie obtain the accusatory information. He also learns, just before he acts, that the Senate has rejected the impeachment. Willie appears, to greet a cheering crowd. Adam kills Willie, knowing that he, himself, will be instantly killed by bodyguards. Why does Adam kill? The question is important. Whether this act was just or unjust depends largely on the motive. Was it in order to succeed where the impeachment had failed: ending the usurpation of a free, democratic state government by a dictator? To revenge the threat that led to his uncle's suicide? To protect his sister from an evil predator? All three? The movie doesn't show. There was no homicide letter. I hope Adam's motivation was primarily the first of these, and that it included something like the psalmist's prayer.
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RELEVANT AND RIVETTING PERFORMANCE!
Added 2/28/2009
All The King's Men is the story of the rise of politician Willie Stark from a rural county seat to the governor's mansion. Along the way, he loses his innocence, and becomes just as corrupt as the politicians he once fought against. Also included is the romance between one of his "right hand women" and the up-and-coming journalist who brings Stark to prominence.
Rossen originally offered the starring role to John Wayne, who found the proposed film script unpatriotic and indignantly refused the part. Crawford, who eventually took the role, won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Actor, beating out Wayne, who had been nominated for his role in Sands of Iwo Jima.
The film won Oscars in the following categories:
Best Picture - Robert Rossen Productions (Robert Rossen, producer)
Best Actor - Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark
Best Supporting Actress - Mercedes McCambridge as Sadie Burke
It was also nominated for
Best Supporting Actor - John Ireland as Jack Burden
Best Director - Robert Rossen
Best Film Editing - Al Clark and Robert Parrish
Best Writing, Screenplay - Robert Rossen
In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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No insight.
Added 7/11/2009
Great performances, especially by Broderick Crawford, can't really save this movie, which doesn't give any insight into why things happened the way they did. Without knowing why the main character becomes corrupted, it's just a downer of a movie, an overlong cliche.
Meet the new boss, same as the old. Or, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. Or, to defeat the machine, you must become the machine.
That's about it.
The only extras on this 2006 release are just promos for the Sean Penn remake.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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