Asleep in Mississippi River Loam
All the King's Men (1949)
directed by Robert Rossen
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
All the King’s Men meant so much to me when I read it in high school that I never re-read it and never watched the hallowed Academy Award-winning 1949 production. That book was encased in amber until I forgot every scene except the memory of watching Anne swim from a dock one beautiful afternoon and Jack driving clear to Los Angeles to drink a milkshake and whisky in a hotel room. Eventually even those details became murky and I decided that I could watch an adaptation and not be hurt by it, no matter how bad it was.
It’s bad, and the greatest sin is that Willie Stark sounds for all the world like a New York teamster. New York doesn’t deserve him; I don’t romanticize the South but Huey Long will always be more interesting to me than a Rockefeller. Robert Penn Warren didn’t hate a single one of his characters, but the film is full of contempt for all of them. It’s cynical in ways the book and the man were not. If the stories are true and John Wayne was the director’s first choice, Duke was right to reject it, not from some patriotic fever but because, as he supposedly wrote, “To make Huey Long a wonderful, rough pirate was great, but, according to this picture, everybody was shit except for this weakling intern doctor who was trying to find a place in the world."
The great stories are love stories and Oscar is a grouch.
directed by Robert Rossen
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
All the King’s Men meant so much to me when I read it in high school that I never re-read it and never watched the hallowed Academy Award-winning 1949 production. That book was encased in amber until I forgot every scene except the memory of watching Anne swim from a dock one beautiful afternoon and Jack driving clear to Los Angeles to drink a milkshake and whisky in a hotel room. Eventually even those details became murky and I decided that I could watch an adaptation and not be hurt by it, no matter how bad it was.
It’s bad, and the greatest sin is that Willie Stark sounds for all the world like a New York teamster. New York doesn’t deserve him; I don’t romanticize the South but Huey Long will always be more interesting to me than a Rockefeller. Robert Penn Warren didn’t hate a single one of his characters, but the film is full of contempt for all of them. It’s cynical in ways the book and the man were not. If the stories are true and John Wayne was the director’s first choice, Duke was right to reject it, not from some patriotic fever but because, as he supposedly wrote, “To make Huey Long a wonderful, rough pirate was great, but, according to this picture, everybody was shit except for this weakling intern doctor who was trying to find a place in the world."
The great stories are love stories and Oscar is a grouch.
posted by NPK at 6:17 AM
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