All The Kings Men (1949)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: B
Robert
Rossen is best known for classics like The
Hustler and the original Body &
Soul, but thanks to the new high-profile remake, many will hopefully
rediscover his remarkable 1949 critical and commercial hit All The Kings Men. The film
covers the rise and fall of the idealistic lawyer Willie Stark (Broderick
Crawford) who starts with some wealth and runs as the “people’s candidate” as
someone who will help the working man. By
the time he gets into power, he is already being seduced by backroom deals,
which slowly changes his common sense, personality and ruins the lives of
himself and everyone around him.
This does
not happen immediately, but it what could be seen as “safer” version of Orson
Welles’ Citizen Kane, the figure is
not a powerful member of the Capitalist Elite, but a self-made man as if only
self-made men could rise and fall so dramatically. The film boldly deals with workers in a way
that today would be labeled “subversive” but extreme Right Wing interests and
is the kind of honest, blunt, smart, powerful film that pushed similar forces
then to start the insane Hollywood witch hunts in the next decade.
Mercedes
McCambridge debuted in this film as his advisor Sadie Burke, immediately
winning a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award and immediately becoming one of
the most interesting starts of the 1950s.
John Ireland won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award Nomination as right-hand
man Jack Burden (appropriately named) and Broderick won for Best Actor and the
film, Best Picture. Anne Seymour is
Stark’s wife, Katharine Warren as Burden’s wife, both good, and John Derek is
even good as Stark’s doomed son.
Rossen
also adapted the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren and infuses
it with a wit, energy and spontaneousness that continues to give the film a
unique lifelike feel over a half-century after its original release. The great Don Siegel, the Warner Bros. montage
editor turned high successful director, was a second unit director on this film
handling the campaign montage sequences.
Columbia
Pictures’ back catalog is underrated and that includes many of its classics
long over due for rediscovery and re-release in any way possible. That a film this great has not been as
discussed as it should be is proof of this.
Yes, it has aged in some ways that limit it, but when it works, it really works! If you love great films, you need to see this
classic, especially before the remake.
The 1.33
X 1 image was shot in black and white by the great Burnett Guffey, who began in
the business doing solid work on films like I Love A Mystery, A Close
Call For Boston Blackie, My Name Is
Julia Ross and The Notorious Lone
Wolf as one of Columbia’s best cinematographers before pulling this
off. It is a really interesting use of
narrow-screen framing, where you get many close and intimate shots, yet it does
not look like bad TV. Instead, it is involving
the way Citizen Kane could be in
similar scenes. This is a new digital
High Definition transfer. Guffey went on
to lens some of the Dean Martin/Matt Helm films, In A Lonely Place, From Here
To Eternity, Homicidal, King Rat, Suppose They Gave A War & Nobody Came and the ever-imitated Bonnie & Clyde. The print has some little flaws here and
there, but is in fine shape for its age.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is in pretty good shape and is on the
cleaned-up side. The only extras are a
trailer and featurette on the 2006 remake, which we look forward to seeing.
- Nicholas Sheffo
