**½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek
screenplay by Robert Rossen, based on the book by Robert Penn
directed by Robert Rossen
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover All the King's Men is an entertainingly blunt-witted exploration of Hollywood's favourite activist cause: Corruption Bad. Taken from Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winner (the inspiration for the current remake, recently trounced by our own Walter Chaw), it finds a juicy if pointless target in Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), the Huey Long stand-in who rises from earnest, clueless nobody to governor of the state, leaving a trail of graft and destruction in his wake. Nobody ever stops to consider what cynical lessons we're learning about the futility of social change and the corruptibility of the individual: as its paragons of decency are a wealthy blueblood family with political ties, it's not exactly a Marxist/Leninist extravaganza. But no matter, as it allows a collection of people to sound off with the kind of melodramatic bull that only Tinseltown can provide.
One can't possibly be expected to sympathize with the willingly-corrupted, thus an audience surrogate materializes in the form of Jack Burden (John Ireland), a weak journalist sent to cover Stark's initial persecution at the hands of backwater authorities. Because Burden is tortured about his ties to wealth, he feels (some might say self-protectively) for the apparently plain-spoken straight-shooter, who gets a double dose of publicity when a school collapses due to a bad contractor. Given the push he needs, Stark is suckered into splitting the vote for the incumbent governor–a sneaky tactic that backfires once he starts talking the "hicks"' language and spitting fire and brimstone all the way to office. Of course Stark soon crawls into bed with the fat cats he previously denounced, and of course he begins enjoying power for power's sake–serving to demonstrate that when corruption happens, it truly is bad.
Still, the zesty, fun-loving demagogue would make for a better dinner companion than Burden and his fellow travelers in the wealthy Stanton clan, including the apparently incorruptible Judge Monte (Raymond Greenleaf) and his daughter, Burden's love interest Anne (Joanne Dru). While Burden is practically doubled-over with his ambivalence at becoming Stark's hatchet man, the judge takes on those only-in-the-movies truth-tellers. We're cued to the latter's decency through his calm composure and stentorian tones long before he throws the attorney general's job in Stark's face to become his number-one opponent. Anne at least has the decency to fall in love with Stark, though she puts it to Burden in the lamest terms, saying, "He isn't like anyone I've ever met," as if that explained anything. We know why she's there: after living with the Stanton clan, she's clearly hard up for kicks.
So All the King's Men is a delightfully pompous duel between an opposing force and an immovable object–the always-in-motion cretin that is Stark and the wise Judge who doles out the platitudes with great alacrity. And the results, though no masterpiece, are reasonably watchable for the sight of two thoroughly abstract forces locking horns for no discernable purpose. It's a casually-assembled good vs. evil number in which it's obvious who's doing wrong and what is the right thing to do. Nobody is getting any edification from such obvious statement-mongering, but what the hell: cram this many thesis statements into a single movie (with a few withering dandies dished by Mercedes McCambridge, earning her Oscar as a shrewish advisor; Crawford and the film itself likewise took home statuettes), you can't help but enjoy the inflation of small ideas with pure hot air.
THE DVD
Stark should have spread a few bucks around the offices of Sony, since the studio didn't even spring for a proper restoration in bringing All the King's Men to DVD. (This, for the second time.) Recycled from the 2001 platter, the fullscreen b&w presentation is not only bedevilled by flecks of print damage, but the transfer itself has issues, too: shadow detail is quite poor, while the lightest portions of the image are hot and susceptible to shimmer. The Dolby 2.0 mono sound, although less obviously problematic, is noticeably brittle. Extras include a 5-minute sneak peek at the remake, which, compared against the subdued original, looks positively terrifying: shots of Sean Penn waving his arms are intercut with the usual sycophantic blather. Said remake's trailer rounds things out.
110 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony
