inevitable results
by Douglas Messerli
Robert Rossen (screenplay based on
the novel by Robert Penn Warren, and director) All the King's Men / 1949
What saves Rossen's work and lifts it above Capra's caprices is the
acting of its supporting characters, particularly John Ireland's thoughtful
playing of the journalist-gone-politico, Jack Burden, and Mercedes McCambridge's
tough, fast-talking Sadie Burke, the woman behind Willie Stark, his would-be
lover. McCambridge won an Oscar for her role (so too did the less subtle
Crawford), and she deserved it, for whenever she is in the picture, the
energy-level of the film goes up by two or three notches, particularly when,
unable to sleep, she joins Burden and Stark to swig down a couple of heavy
drinks before telling him what a boob he has been.
Stark (a just slightly fictionalized portrait of the real hick Louisiana
Governor, Huey Long) begins his trip to hell as a country rube who, as the
newspaper editor Madison describes him, is "special."
Jack Burden: What's so
special about him?
Madison: They say he's an
honest man.
Encouraged by his long-suffering
wife, Lucy (Anne Seymour), Stark tries to run for local office, but fails
pitifully due to the criminal actions of those already ensconced. When the
corrupt pols cheat on the construction of a local school, however, the collapse
of a stairwell killing several children brings Stark, after having studied law,
into the forefront, winning the love of the local masses.
In opposition to the political brouhaha of the Louisiana backfields and
Baton Rouge backrooms, Burden has grown up in the posh isolation of Burden's
Landing. As he puts it:
....Burden's Landing is a
place on the Moon. It isn't real. It doesn't exist.
It's me pretending to live
on what I earn. It's my mother trying to keep
herself young and drinking
herself old. It's you and Adam living in his
house as though your father
were still alive. It's an old man like the judge
dreaming of the past.
Yet it is just this place that
breeds the four major characters, some of whom help Willie get where he does
and others of whom help to destroy him.
Jack is perhaps the most contradictory of the group. Despite his early
recognition of Stark's corruption, he continues to stand by him almost until
the end. He is a grand failure in terms of action. While the Stanton's, Anne
(Joanne Dru) and Adam (Shepperd Strudwick), and their uncle, the Judge (Raymond
Greenleaf) live through ideals, Jack is a born skeptic, refusing to judge or
reveal any moral position, even when he might have helped save Stark from
himself. The difference between the brother and sister is merely a difference
of judgment: Anne is taken in by Stark simply because he is different, and her
view of him is clouded as she perceives him as a kind of white knight. Stark
does accomplish a great deal, building a new state hospital, improving roads,
building dams, etc. But Adam perceives the other side of the picture, and, at
first, refuses to take the position of top surgeon at the new hospital, despite
Stark's offer. His uncle also resists Stark's offer for him to become State
Attorney General, but finally caves in, swept up in all the hoopla and,
perhaps, by his own pride of his past.
In short, the whirlwind that is Willie Stark sweeps up all the
characters into his wake, altering their lives through his own
self-destruction. Anne falls in love with the monster, rejecting the
ineffectual love of Jack Burden. But, in a sense, she is wise to do so, for
Burden is utterly passive, a storyteller, not an actor in any tale. At least
Stark is alive!
So too is Stark's wife left alone after the tornado of her husband's
life, and their adopted son, Tom, who is destroyed through his own rebellion
against his father, paralyzed through a drunken driving accident that kills his
female passenger. When one of Stark's appointments, Pillsbury, is caught up in
graft, the Judge, told he cannot prosecute, resigns, and it appears that
Stark's fall is near.
Yet Stark pulls through by pleading with the electorate who have brought
him to office. Like a conjurer, he creates a circus atmosphere that washes even
over the legislature. But winning is itself a kind of "burden," as
Stark is forced to find corruption even in the life of the noble Judge. When
Stark reveals his knowledge (uncovered by Burden) of a long-ago event of
corruption in his life, the judge kills himself.
Just as Stark is convinced he has won again, a man—Adam Stanton—moves
toward him with a gun and shoots him dead. Stark's fawning assistant, Sugar
Boy, kills Stanton. If there is something almost too pat about the ending of
this cautionary tale, so too was it in real life. Some behaviors, Rossen and
Warren suggest, simply create inevitable results.
Los Angeles, March 1, 2012
Reprinted from International
Cinema Review (March 2012).
No comments:
Post a Comment