Best Picture: #22
Original Release Date: November 8, 1949
Rating: Approved
Runtime: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Director: Robert Rossen
Quick Impressions:
All the King’s Men is a timely and emotionally exhausting movie about the journey of a narcissistic and dangerous would-be dictator who becomes increasingly morally flawed on his meteoric rise to power until he completely conflates his own will with the will of the people he claims to serve.
In college, I either read this book or I didn’t. (We may never know for sure.) My best friend chose to do her Junior Poet Project (an important milestone in our program) on Robert Penn Warren. And I remember her reading the novel All the King’s Men when we were roommates. But I thought I had never read it myself. Then my daughter and I started watching the movie, and strange memories began to trickle back.
Perhaps I read All the King’s Men in the American Lit course I took in the fall of my senior year of college. Uncharacteristically (for me), I remember almost nothing about the material we studied in that class, strange because I remember the professor’s colorful anecdotes perfectly. I also remember a lot of stories about him. My friends all had him for another literature course sophomore year. They would come back complaining that he frequently told them how much he enjoyed “making love to his beautiful wife.” Then one day, weeks into the class, one of them uncovered a shocking secret–his wife was actually dead! After that, they viewed his reminiscences of making love to her in a different light. We were all very sad for him for the next two years until at a cocktail party, one of us actually bumped into his wife, very much alive. I still remember how I laughed when my friend assured me in an aside, “She was never dead,” because her tone implied that the professor and his wife had somehow been a part of this ridiculous mix-up along with us, when in reality, the woman had simply been going about her life the entire time, unaware we thought she was six feet under. I also remember that the professor did not cancel class on September 11th. He said, “If we are too afraid to go on with our lives, then we let the terrorists win.”
We read The Portrait of a Lady. I remember that. And when we read The Ambassadors and I complained about reading on and on and on without finding a verb, he replied, “If you’re going to be concerned about having verbs in your sentences, then maybe Henry James is not for you.”
But I don’t remember if I read All the King’s Men. If not, though, why do I remember so many characters’ names and plot points? I feel like I’ve read the Cliffs Notes instead of the book, but I never do that. So I’m puzzled. Maybe someone else did an extremely thorough class presentation about the book? I don’t know. (I remember the late episode with the judge vividly. Maybe I read only the end of the book? Maybe I grew bored while searching for verbs in The Ambassadors and skimmed through this book instead???)
The film focuses more on Willie Stark (kind of a fictional version of Huey Long), whereas the novel (as I remember it) is more about Jack Burden, the reporter who works for Stark. It’s a pretty good movie, but not an inspiring one. If you’re already depressed about politics in 2020, watching All the King’s Men won’t help.
The Plot:
Journalist Jack Burden doesn’t know what he’s doing with himself. Then he meets rising political dynamo Willie Stark, a Huey Long type who comes from humble origins and dreams of becoming president. Soon Jack leaves his job to join Willie’s campaign and becomes Stark’s trusted advisor, an insider who helps enable Willie’s rise to power. But by the time he becomes governor, Willie Stark isn’t such a good guy anymore. Jack watches as Willie destroys everyone in his life. Finally, a moment of crisis arrives. Something happens. Jack watches.
The Good:
Broderick Crawford is spellbinding as Willie Stark. (“Messiah or dictator?” a short film within the film aptly asks.) Back when I either did or did not read the book, I associated Stark with Huey Long. But this time as I watched his blustering swagger and fiery rallies, I found it impossible not to associate him with more recent political figures. Stark’s particular style of taking and way wielding power seem to have come back in fashion recently. For that reason, I found the film more depressing than I might have under other circumstances.
Crawford won Best Actor for his portrayal of Stark, and it’s easy to see why. His character dominates the film. He’s always talking, acting. With limited exceptions, the other characters listen and react, just like the audience. Clearly in his own mind, Stark is the state, and Broderick Crawford pretty much is the movie.
The film gives us the portrait of a homespun, silver-tongued demagogue who becomes more frightening as he reaches more people. With limited influence, Stark could be a hero. Often the causes he champions are just. He is a reformer, a builder of schools and roads. Unfortunately, he’s the type of person who always wants more. As his reach increases, he becomes more grasping. He perfects his personal brand to the point that eventually, he is his message. He stands only for himself, and he expects the people to stand for him, too. Quite often, they do.
Compared to Willie Stark, few other people in the film are the slightest bit interesting. Jack Burden (John Ireland), who leads us into the story, gives us no particular reason to become invested in him or his life. He does, though, serve as a barometer for the audience, helping us to gauge what our reaction to Willie’s behavior ought to be. As we watch Jack first become infatuated with Willie, we anticipate and mark Stark’s ascent. Then later, Jack’s growing dissatisfaction with Willie validates our own concern’s about Stark’s corrupt behavior.
Jack isn’t very interesting himself, and his sometime love interest, Anne (Joanne Dru) is even less interesting. She wants Jack “to be something” but makes no particular effort to be much of anything herself as far as we can tell from this movie. Like Jack, she seems to be searching for identity in other people. (It’s basically like she’s telling him “to be something,” so she can be Mrs. Something.) Anne’s brother Adam (Shepherd Strudwick) does have an identity. He knows exactly who is. He’s a doctor. But we don’t get to see much of him. He does something important, but he takes his sweet time about it.
Not surprisingly, both Jack and Anne get completely swept up in the mythos, the enormous, soul-stealing ego of Willie Stark. Even Adam (a different type of person) finds himself a part of the Stark machine.
Aside from Stark himself, the character who makes the greatest impression (at least on me) is the shrewd, canny, motivated political insider Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge). Sadie has a tremendous sense of identity, and she has amazing insights and confidence about her ability to do her job. But she also falls under Stark’s spell, loses herself in Willie. Stark’s wife Lucy (Anne Seymour) and son Tom (John Derek) also seem to have a strong sense of self, but they, too, get trapped by the growing myth of Willie Stark, prisoners to his seemingly inescapable personality. Their eyes are wide open, but even so, they can’t get free of Willie.
What the film does best, I think, is show us how easily all of these wildly different types of people are pulled into Stark’s orbit and soon unable to escape from his larger-than-life persona. (I couldn’t decide if I should describe him as a sun or more of a black hole. At any rate, he’s a star.) Nobody escapes Willie Stark. He’s a massive narcissist, a giant, ravenous ball of self who gobbles up all lesser selves. Those who resist usually end up dead.
Watching, I kept thinking that the most terrifying part of Stark’s rise to power is the way it snowballs beyond his control. In the end, he has only the illusion of control. There’s something terrifying about his menacing charisma. He’s like a force of nature unleashed on the world, a ravenous wildfire destined to burn until he burns out.
Best Scene:
I love the fairly early scene just after Sadie makes Willie aware that he has been used as a political pawn. When he staggers drunkenly up the stairs to give his speech–boy, what a speech! Broderick Crawford plays this scene masterfully. He earns his Best Actor Oscar here. (It’s so odd to hear a demographic openly referred to as “hicks.” But there’s a power in the euphony of Stark’s repeated appeals to them.)
Best Scene Visually:
My favorite scene comes when Sadie hunts down Jack in his hotel room, then stands critiquing her own appearance in the mirror. Sadie is my favorite character in the movie, anyway (by a mile). I’m extremely biased against almost everyone in the movie in a visceral, knee-jerk way that doesn’t make rational sense. Instead of All the King’s Men, I’d call the film, Sadie, the Judge, Willie’s Wife, and a Bunch of Jerks.
I am not at all familiar with Mercedes McCambridge, but her character is compelling, in part because she seems quite different from everyone else. I love the actress’s unusual voice. She seems very un-Hollywood, like they actually picked up some random political activist off the street and asked her to play the part. Her character has an unusual degree of realism. I have never worked for a political campaign, but I believe that Sadie does.
After watching the movie, I learned that McCambridge won Best Supporting Actress for her performance, which she thoroughly deserves.
This scene in Jack’s hotel room is strong for multiple reasons. Thanks to McCambridge, it’s beautifully acted. It’s well written, too, thoughtfully conceived. We get to see Sadie, who has been hurt by Stark, gaze into a mirror and tell us why his offending behavior is her fault. This illustrates beautifully Stark’s ability to manipulate and deceive. Through the course of the film, he’s revealed to us more and more as a narcissistic ego maniac. He hurts so many people, yet he always paints himself as the victim of enemies who also oppose all the good things he purports to stand for.
But it’s the look of the scene that first impressed me. As Sadie enters the room, Jack is lying on the bed. I like the shot. He’s in the foreground. She’s in the background. The entire frame is filled. We get a sense of the depth of the room. And as the scene progresses, the room seems to get bigger and bigger as we see the mirror, a doorway, a photograph of someone else, a glimpse into Sadie’s memories.
My daughter also loved a late scene featuring Jack wandering through a crowd of Stark supporters waving signs bearing Stark’s name and slogans supporting him. She observed, “I think this scene is awfully symbolic because Jack’s trying to figure out who he is, and Willie’s throwing all these lines at him, trying to get him to stay.”
Best Action Sequence:
My daughter and I are both huge fans of the car crash. First of all, we loved the visual metaphor of a car careening out of control on the Willie Stark Highway. The scene is also intriguing visually, shot from such fascinating angles. It marks a major turning point in Stark’s story, too. Eventually he is completely undone by events set in motion by this crash, an occurrence totally beyond his control. This is really just about the only thing that happens to Willie Stark. Usually he is the one making things happen. I love the entire subplot featuring Tom and his mother.
The Negatives:
Because the film’s subject matter struck me as so timely, I was looking to it for enlightenment. I was looking for revelations about the intricacies of Stark’s character, for gradual evolution of his behavior or changes in the people around him. I wondered what this movie would tell us about society in general. I expected some insight into how Starks are made and the society that makes them. But the film doesn’t say much. Stark himself does all the talking.
This movie goes by so quickly. As I watched, I almost felt like part of it was missing.
When the movie begins, like Jack, we’re on Willie Stark’s side. What we’ve seen of the man leaves us with a positive impression. He’s just a man of the people, one of the so-called “hicks,” fighting a corrupt system, railing against the sort of government graft that caused the shoddy building of a local school and killed a bunch of children. Willie Stark wants justice for people like him. He’s the voice of the common man. He knows that people listen to him, and he wants to use his voice to do good things.
That’s all well and good.
But Willie turns into a corrupt, terrifying megalomaniac so incredibly quickly. It’s not much of a slide into corruption. There’s no gradual change. He gets one small taste of success, and suddenly he starts fast-tracking himself to be the next Hitler.
In the beginning, he seems like a family man. Five minutes later, every woman in the movie is his mistress. He starts out as an honest guy with big dreams, but as soon as even a hint of success comes his way, he apparently adopts the Scarlet O’Hara philosophy of life. He’s insanely eager to lie, cheat, steal, and kill at every opportunity. He also intimidates, bribes, and blackmails. Soon it’s all too clear what he believes in–himself. He sets himself up as a false god, worships the image of himself, and insists on similar adoration from everyone else he encounters. He loves having huge rallies and yelling passionate, self-aggrandizing speeches to his (sometimes paid) mobs of followers while standing in front of enormous flags of his own giant face. It’s all very depressing. It makes you think, Gee, that’s right. Just when it seems like 2020 couldn’t possibly get any worse, the presidential election is right around the corner. Fun.
I kind of lost the thread of what I was saying there, but my point is, the film moves awfully quickly. We don’t see much of a gradual change in Willie. His corruption isn’t an insidious slippery slope of a process. It’s more of a light switch. First he seems kind of good, and then we get a little closer to him, and someone turns on the lights, and we see that he’s always been bad.
I wish the film had given us more character development. It focuses so much on Broderick Crawford’s Willie Stark, but it doesn’t show him experiencing gradual change. I suppose you could call this a character study, but if that’s the case, it’s the study of a static character. Stark never changes. He only becomes more powerful. And we grow increasingly wise to his tricks.
I wish we saw a bit more nuance, or at least that the truth about Stark were revealed more slowly.
I also found it hard to warm up to John Ireland’s Jack Burden. He’s so vague. He seems to have no self-concept. He just loses himself in Willie Stark. Eventually, he does notice that Stark is a horrible person, but he still defines himself through Stark.
One thing that struck me quite profoundly is that once Stark is not in the movie, I do not care at all what happens to anyone else. (Well, I’m a little interested in Sadie. I’m drawn to her more than the others.) But Jack and his circle are all so boring and empty (in this film). The movie doesn’t do much to flesh them out at all.
When Jack is considering leaving Stark, that should be a big deal, but I found I just didn’t care because Jack seems so irrelevant. In the book, he seemed more important. Stark has such a loud voice that he dominates the film. Everyone else is just kind of listening to him, being acted on by him. I couldn’t get invested in the other characters, especially not Jack.
My daughter had a lot to say about this movie as we watched. She talked passionately through the entire thing, emphatically decrying the faults of the characters and yelling at them to take responsibility for their actions. But then once the movie was over, she found it hadn’t left much of an impression.
She ranked it #9 of #22, which I feel is generous. I prefer the novel, and I can’t even remember if I read it! The movie disappointed me by not making Jack and his friends seem real to me. Their problems never seemed urgent. Anne is particularly unlikeable.
To be honest, though, I find it hard to be fair to this movie. The Willie Starks of this world have become so deeply unpleasant to me that I find myself emotionally exhausted when asked to listen to this one rail grandstanding nonsense for two hours. I’d just rather watch something else.
Overall:
All the King’s Men is a well made film that I had trouble becoming invested in emotionally. Willie Stark dominates the movie, and though he’s both charismatic and loud, he’s ultimately so unpleasant that I resent being asked to engage in his shenanigans. Let the people who surround him develop personalities and figure out what to do with themselves. What can I do about it? Why should I be dragged into this? Here in 2020, I have problems enough of my own. The film certainly illustrates the dangers of rejecting the concept of personal agency, of getting passively swept away by a convincing demagogue. But honestly, the human race is unlikely to learn much from the mistakes of the past, no matter how cogent a case a book or film makes against this behavior. Humanity gets swept along with catastrophic trends over and over again, and that’s not my fault.