All The King's Men 1949

The Film:

This is the film on the whole list of nearly ninety films that I probably knew least about. It would be my best bet for a Pointless answer as, for some reason, nobody seems to remember it.

I had to do some digging to get hold of a copy - and eventually got one from Poland. The spine of the DVD says "Gubernator" as the title - which gives a bit more of a clue as to what the film is about.

I did a bit more digging around Wikipedia and IMDB to find out a bit more. I don't really recognise the names of any of the lead players (except Mercedes McCambridge, who I know from her most famous line, which isn't quite "Your mother cooks socks in hell" - but I would never have been able to pick the voice of the demon in The Exorcist out of a visual line up!). Reviews on IMDB rate the film very highly, along with its Pulitzer Prize-winning source novel.

This left me wondering. Did I just have a random glaring gap in my movie knowledge - or is there some other reason why this film is pretty much forgotten?

The Ceremony:

Held on March 23rd 1950 at the Pantages Theater and hosted by Paul Douglas, who was one of the stars of multiple nominee A Letter To Three Wives.

I don't have any more interesting information about the ceremony - except for the fact that this is (and probably will remain) the last year that all the Best Picture nominees were in black and white - the end of the 40s definitely marked the end of a particular style of film making and the start of the domination of sweeping technicolor spectaculars!


Other Notable Winners That Night:

The Acting Awards (you can work out who is who!)

The Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress went towards the total of three awards for All The King's Men.

Olivia de Havilland won her second Oscar for The Heiress, which had been tipped to win more of the big prizes that night. Best Supporting Actor was Dean Jagger (a classic Hollywood character actor) for 12 O'Clock High.

Joseph L Mankiewicz won two awards - director and screenplay - for A Letter To Three Wives. And we'll come back to him again next year....)

The Honorary Awards are interesting this year. Jean Hersholt won his, six years before he had one named after him. And Ginger Rogers presented one to Fred Astaire!

Best Song:

I know this one - Baby It's Cold Outside - because it's one that hasn't really gone away and has since become a bit of a Christmas classic. (The Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews version comes to mind first). I'd never heard of the film it came from - Neptune's Daughter - a late era Esther Williams musical which is probably quite good fun (and, no doubt, wet in parts). Here's the song in its original context:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

"I'm running off with your husband - but which one?"

This is the first year for a very long time (since the early 30s) where not only had I not seen any of the other nominees, I hadn't even heard of them.

I've found out very little about "Battleground" or "Twelve O'Clock High" except that they are both war films that don't sound particularly interesting to me.

The other two sounded interesting - "The Heiress" is based on a Henry James novel and won Olivia de Havilland the Best Actress Oscar. And "A Letter To Three Wives" won Best Director and was many people's tip for the big prize. I found the whole of the latter on Youtube and watched it the day after we watched All The King's Men. I think the right film won - but I really enjoyed "...Three Wives" and I'm glad I found out about it and got chance to watch it!

Our Verdict:

An honest Politician?

It's been a week or so now since we saw the film, and I'm still thinking about it off and on. Andy is doing the same, only more so. He absolutely loved it, has it right up there with Casablanca and Rebecca on his 40s list and is now really keen to read the book (so that's one Christmas present sorted).

I really liked this film and it's left me wondering even more why it is so forgotten. Maybe it would be played more if it was in colour? Or had the name of a more enduring star or director attached to it? Or maybe it's the subject matter that put it off limits a bit too much in the politically sensitive decades that followed in America. Whatever it is, so many people are missing out by not watching it!

Josh Lynam and Sam Seaborn from another era.....

It's based on a novel of the same name which, itself, is loosely based on the story of 1930s Governor Huey Long. To say too much about what happened to Gov Long would be to give away the ending of this film, but our protagonist here, Willie Stark, has a very similar career and one which ends in the same way.

The basic plot is the story of small-town, self-educated man-of-the-people Willie Stark who runs unsuccessfully in a local election but is picked up by some lobbyists (headed by Oscar-winning McCambridge) as a fall guy in a bigger election to basically split the vote and let their guy win. All this is being followed by a journalist who lets on to Stark what the deal is and ultimately quits his job and helps him to become Governor himself.

"We want Willie!"

Despite his initial ideals, Stark becomes a living example of the truism that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". He becomes more and more driven to achieve his political ideals by whatever means, fair or (more usually) foul - and he drags his team down with him.

Men and power and women - same as ever!

I'm not going to provide any spoilers here - so I'll go on to say that this story was told brilliantly. The acting, the script, the pacing of events, the black and white cinematography. All of it is done superbly. Stark's key followers are all great characters - their various motivations, and the different points at which the penny drops for them and they try to back off are shown so well and are so believable. The various strands of the conclusion that the film comes to are woven cleverly so that watching the film becomes a very satisfying experience.

One of the most impressive things about this film is also one of the saddest and most disturbing - even though it is nearly seventy years old, it is incredibly relevant to today's world and the way power is used and abused in modern society. The weekend that we watched the film was the same weekend that the Harvey Weinstein revelations were gathering momentum - and there's Willie Stark giving us a few examples of exactly that sort of behaviour! And, of course, the current tenant of The White House is also an outsider and a "man of the people". As to whether he's as corrupt as Willie Stark or not - (to quote someone else who appears to have been abusing his power) I couldn't possibly comment!