On movie screens in 1939, a rube took on Washington politicos, counting on the fundamental decency of the American people and their leaders to carry the day. Sixty-five years later, a bespectacled schlub from Flint, Mich., created a documentary in which he took on Washington politicos, and fundamental decency had a very small role.
At first blush, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “Fahrenheit 9/11” seem worlds apart. “Mr. Smith,” in which James Stewart plays a mild-mannered boys’ club leader-turned U.S. senator, offers an idealized view of the American political system.
In sharp contrast, “Fahrenheit,” the latest liberal screed from documentarian Michael Moore, offers a scathing attack on a sitting U.S. president.
Despite their differences, both movies offer testimony to Hollywood’s obsession with politics, one that goes back to the roots of cinema: In 1915, D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” blamed freed slaves and white carpetbaggers from the North for the mess that was politics in the post-Civil War South.
This week, perhaps timed to the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, further evidence of that fascination arrives with a remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” a 1962 thriller about a brainwashed ex-POW programmed to undercut the American political process. The movie opens Friday.
Such movies provide windows on the vast changes that have sculpted the political landscape over the years. If Frank Capra’s Depression-era civics lesson is innately optimistic, then Michael Moore’s wartime anti-Bush-administration harangue seems afflicted by a whopping dose of cynicism.
But in ways that may not be immediately apparent, the two films share similarities; each is a snapshot of a political system that works only if the citizenry pays attention and is given the opportunity to pay attention. Capra and Moore may seem unlikely bedfellows, but a careful look at how Hollywood has treated politics over the years suggests a common thread.
Both films suggest strongly that America’s leaders would serve the electorate best by being honest – a recurring theme in works such as “The Best Man,” “Being There,” “Bulworth,” “Advise and Consent.”
It even pops up in comedies such as the Marx Brothers’” Duck Soup” and “Dave” (1993).
Throughout the ’30s and early ’40s, many movies reflected a basic trust in government. In John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), one of the few friendly faces the Joad family meets during its desperate migration to California is a representative of the U.S. government.
But dark undertones are already present: Even in “Mr. Smith,” his fellow senators, exemplified by Claude Rains’ character, are a corrupt lot. Movies such as “Citizen Kane” (1941) and Preston Sturges’ pointed satire, “The Great McGinty” (1940), wore their cynicism unvarnished.
In post-World War II America, nostalgia for old-school politicians began to emerge: “All The King’s Men” (1949) held back nothing in its portrait of an American power broker corrupted absolutely. More overt was John Ford’s “The Last Hurrah” (1958), with Spencer Tracy as a big-city political boss watching his power slip away.
The disillusionment that followed the Vietnam War and Watergate brought the rise of another riff on political films: the rise of the politician who achieves power only by bucking the establishment, such as in “The Candidate” (1972), and “The Seduction of Joe Tynan” (1979).
The 1990s brought a spate of movies featuring idealized politicians: “The American President” (1995) and “Bulworth” (1998) stand out.
Among recent political films, two stand out as harbingers of where the genre may be headed: “Wag The Dog” (1997) and “The Contender” (2000).
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