Oscars Retrospective: All the King's Men (22nd Academy Awards Review)
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All the King’s Men is very much what you would call a mixed bag. These are films where there are plenty of good parts but there are also plenty of bad parts that can hold you back from calling it a masterpiece. It’s especially frustrating in films like this because the good parts are really, really good but that just makes the flaws all the more apparent and prevent it from being a truly great film. Especially when it could have been there with just a little bit of tinkering.
Based off a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, All the King’s Men details the rise and fall of a corrupt politician named Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) in the American South, as seen through the eyes of a reporter-turned-eventual-henchman, Jack Burden (John Ireland). While the state is deliberately unnamed, it strongly resembles Louisiana and, armed with this knowledge, the character is pretty obviously based off of notorious Louisianan Governor-turned-Senator Huey Long. Long remains one of the most controversial politicians in American history as he ran Louisiana like his own personal kingdom and flagrantly violated democratic norms in his quest for power though, in so doing, he rapidly accelerated Louisiana’s growth into the 20th century. Depending on who you ask, Long was either a champion for the poor who refused to bow down to the corrupt political class or a fascist demagogue (even though his political beliefs were closer to Communism) who, if elected President, would’ve become the American equivalent to Benito Mussolini.
The film takes the same tact with the fictional character of Willie Stark, which I really wish more movies based on true stories would apply. Watching All the King’s Men, you honestly wouldn’t know that it was based on real events unless you did the research yourself which would lead you to the story of a pretty fascinating figure. Contrast this with most other films that sell themselves as being based on a true story (both back then and now), and are frustratingly based on half-truths and historical inaccuracies, it really makes you appreciate the movie more.
Broderick Crawford is chillingly good as Willie Stark. The direction that the film takes is a moral descent into corruption. Stark starts off as an honest, if somewhat obtuse, countryman who wants to help his community and grows from annoyed to angry at the crushing classism perpetrated by the political class that rules his state. He wants to do the right thing but is not fully equipped to do so. In order to actually get to a position where he can enact change, he must immerse himself in the back-handed world of the political machine where it takes a very strong and humble type of person to withstand it and not become corrupted themselves. And Willie Stark is clearly not that type of person.
It’s a very nuanced performance that makes or breaks the movie. When All the King’s Men starts, Stark is polite to a fault, lacks confidence but generally means well. By the end of the film, he practically oozes sleaze. But it’s never too fast or too slow. Crawford is very good at making Stark’s descent feel very well-paced. Each beat feels perfectly earned and seems the next logical step for how his character would behave. It’s really fun watching his speeches slowly morph from constantly saying “we” and talking about working together to constantly saying “I” and talking about how his enemies must be defeated.
The character embodies a lot of commentary and lessons on both contemporary and historical (and even modern) politics. For one thing, it dispels the famous, oft-repeated myth in the 1930s of how “it can’t happen here” (‘it’ referring to the fascist takeovers of Spain, Germany and Italy). It also shows how the hardy, uneducated lot that makes up Stark base is sadly prone to manipulation by a strongman politician who will not have their best intentions truly at heart. And, finally, one great aspect of Crawford’s performance is that despite all of Stark’s bluster and bullying, he is a clearly very insecure person. This is the type of person who is least suited to rule, the type who will use power to fill a void and will do anything to not feel that powerless again (for a real-life example, compare the easy self-confidence and wisdom-beyond-his-years of John Kennedy with his people-pleasing and paranoid rival, Richard Nixon).
Crawford’s performance in the climax of the film is especially excellent. The whole sequence really shows the power and horror of an American demagogue with Willie Stark’s final speech being the best part of the movie. It employs some downright violent and disturbing rhetoric, still couched in the lofty ideals of populism. It’s so good that I was surprised to realize that this speech was actually less than a minute long! By the time we reach this point, you’re so sucked in that you don’t realize how fast or slow the time is going. For people who lived through the reign of Huey Long, and in 1949 were now witnessing the rise of another potential demagogue in the form of Senator Joseph McCarthy, this scene must’ve been frightening back in the day.
For as good as Crawford is, though, the actual main character fails to impress. As mentioned above, Stark isn’t technically the protagonist; instead that title belongs to his right-hand man, Jack Burden, and good God is Burden boring. This is a common trope with a movie like this in that it revolves around a pretty monstrous and powerful person so in order to give the film some gravity and grounding, it’ll provide the monstrous person with a sidekick who will act as an audience surrogate. This character basically exists to reflect the moral barometer of the audience as an everyman; for you to project yourself onto this person and see how you would react in this situation. More often than not, this character usually finds themselves being morally complicit in the atrocities that their powerful boss commits. (For a modern example of this trope, see The Last King of Scotland (2006)).
This trope is usually done as a “moral failing” story wherein said main character will become steadily sleazier and corrupted until by the end, they barely recognize themselves anymore. The problem? We’re already doing that arc with Willie Stark and it’s much more engaging there because his downfall has several layers to it as mentioned above. In addition, Stark is also a very fun and memorable character and Burden very much is not. Because he’s such a blank slate, there’s very little engaging about the character: he’s not funny, he’s not witty, he doesn’t have that strong of a moral code, so why are we watching him? Why couldn’t we cut out the middleman and just have a movie about Willie Stark? I really don’t think this is a movie that needs an everyman; the audience would be perfectly capable of seeing the story as it is and drawing parallels between Stark and real-life politicians.
And if it did need an everyman, I think that this is a problem that has a bit of an easy fix. One of the other major characters is Jack’s friend/kinda-sorta implied love interest Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge) who works as a campaign staffer for Stark after defecting from an establishment politician and develops a huge crush on him. This makes for a far more interesting character and I genuinely feel that the movie could’ve gone from good to great if it instead chose to center around her conflict.
Another problem with All the King’s Men is that the pacing is a little weird. It’s very hard to articulate unless you’re watching the movie but while the story moves well insofar as each scene does tie back into Stark’s decline, some scenes don’t feel like they’re given the right amount of time to breathe. Not all of them, some of them feel like the right amount of time, but it’s enough to notice and feel out of place.
Apparently the original cut of All the King’s Men was over 4 hours long, way past what the studio would’ve considered economical. The director, Robert Rossen, hired Robert Parrish, widely considered one of the best and most professional editors in the biz, to figure out a way to get the running time down. Numerous scenes of Stark on the road and talking to his supporters were now truncated down to nice little montages as well as some other trimming of the fat. Yet the movie was still bloated and the release date was getting closer and closer. Finally, Rossen told Parrish to “select what you consider the center of the scene… regardless of what’s going on.” Now, every scene was cut down on the beginning and end, leaving just the meat of it. As a result, All the King’s Men was trimmed down to a much tidier 110 minutes.
Because of this, All the King’s Men has a weird feel to it that makes it stand out from most other films of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Characters almost never actually complete a scene; they usually end up making a decision and then get cut almost mid-sentence. While this allows All the King’s Men to move, it is something you definitely notice once you realize it’s there. I don’t know if it’s that big of an issue or if it’s just because I watch a lot of movies so I know what to look for, but I think the movie would’ve been better served if Rossen and Parrish had shown more discipline in which scenes to trim in this manner and which ones to leave as is. It’s one of those fun little mysteries of pacing where by making the movie a little bit longer, it probably would’ve felt shorter.
Despite these issues, I still think that All the King’s Men is a good movie and a very good parable. The story is genuinely timeless and asks a lot of questions about American democracy and populism that don’t have very easy answers. Some of the scenes shown actually have some interesting parallels to today’s problems which does go to show how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This in part is also what can make All the King’s Men somewhat frustrating as the flaws do drag it down and it’s almost a masterpiece. This is a movie that I think could actually deserve a remake. Take the story, update it somewhat, fix the pacing issues, get rid of the Jack Burden character and you could have something that would be really special. Hell, you could even keep it in black-and-white. This is another noir-adjacent film where the heavy shadows from the trees and swamps really add to the dark atmosphere (particularly the aforementioned climax) and helps accentuate the quietly chilling story. This is a story that deserves to be built upon to make it a masterpiece that it deserves to be (though, at that point, the question becomes why not just do an outright biopic of Huey Long but I digress).
As it is, though, I’d still recommend All the King’s Men. As mentioned, this is a movie that rides or dies by the main performance and, even if everything around him isn’t the best, Broderick Crawford’s performance is truly excellent. It’s worth a watch just on that basis alone. If you like old movies, this is one worth checking out.
But could one great performance be enough to call it movie of the year?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2
5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2
6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2
7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2
8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2
9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2
10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2
11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2
12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2
13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2
14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2
15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2
16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2
17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2
18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2
19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2
20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2
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