Monday Movies Post

I need to talk McGinty. It's the first movie I ever wrote a Monday Movie Post about, and although that was shorter than what I normally do (when I do them...), I wouldn't feel the need to revisit a movie. Except that someone else wrote about "The Great McGinty" this week, and I think got it wrong.

(I'll link, but I'm also recycling key bits below, and expanding, so no real need to click through).

If you don't know it...McGinty (1940) is the first movie directed by Preston Sturges. As a movie, it's only fair...or, better, it's only brilliant occasionally. He's still learning the craft, or maybe it was cut up by the studio; at any rate, while The Lady Eve or Miracle of Morgan's Creek are extremely well-constructed, this one isn't.

The movie follows McGinty, a homeless bum who wins favor with the corrupt machine that controls local politics by setting a record for casting the most votes in an election, as he goes from the bottom all the way to the top, only to be undone when he suddenly goes Goo Goo after becoming Governor.

The question of the movie is whether McGinty was right to reform. Peter Hoskin apparently believes so:

McGinty’s wife Catherine – played by the London-born Muriel Angelus – isn’t as strong and single-minded a female character as Barbara Stanwyck’s in The Lady Eve (1941) or Veronica Lake’s in Sullivan’s Travels (1941), she’s still the moral centre of the film. “What are you trying to do? Reform me?” blusters the tough-guy McGinty, when she encourages him to change his ways. But reform he does.

Yes. But are we supposed to buy McGinty's wife as the "moral center" of the study? I don't think so, at all; I think that gets Sturges wrong. She's no more the moral center of this one than Henry Fonda is in The Lady Eve...or for that matter than the title character of Sullivan's Travels is the moral center. It's true that the politicians in "McGinty" are corrupt, but the jobs they provide and the public works they build are real, and as I read the movie, real points in their favor. The quote I like to pull isn't from Catherine (she's not quite a sap, but she's out to make others into saps), but from William Demerest's character:

If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics, men without ambition, jellyfish!

It's played for laughs, and gets them -- but he and the rest of the gang are also making the same case made by Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, that self-interested politicians make democracy work for ordinary citizens. That is, that the wise guys are the only ones in a position to make democracy work. Not by going Goo Goo, though. Barbara Stanwyck, after all, doesn't wind up with Henry Fonda in "Eve" by going straight, exactly.

Perhaps thinking about her, though, helps us to think about McGinty and his wife. Because I think it's absolutely clear that she, and not Fonda, is as close to a moral center as that movie gets, isn't it? Unless it's Demerest, I suppose, but even there he's not the sap that Fonda is; he at least sees through Stanwyck's disguise. I'd argue, though, that it's her fully aware willingness to...well, not exactly do good, is it? No; at all points in "Eve," her character is fully acting on self-interest. She starts off as a simple scam artist; she then uses her skills in a will revenge plot; and then, finally, she uses her skills again to reconcile with Fonda. Not, surely, for him, but for herself.

If that's the case, then McGinty's moment of selfless "good" is in fact a terrible mistake -- not just for him (as he is quickly and surely punished for it), but for the citizens who voted for him, as well. To the extent that McGinty needed to reform, it wasn't that he needed to give up "corruption." He only had to restrict himself, and the machine, to Plunkitt's "honest graft."

"The Great McGinty" probably can support either reading, but Sturges as a whole really doesn't, I don't think. Hoskin sees Sturges in that movie as "cynical," and I agree that everyone is a legitimate target for satire -- but I don't think that it's an "equal-opportunities disdain for everyone and everything in the system." I read Sturges as saying exactly the opposite: it's not disdain that he feels for the people he pokes fun at, but respect and, sappy as it may sound, patriotism.

What destroys McGinty isn't that the system is evil and he's unable to overcome it; it's that he (for just a moment) foolishly mistakes an imperfect, seemingly irrational, often ugly, but actually working system for an evil one, and for that moment he closes his eyes and becomes a sap. And for that, he is justly ruined.

Anyway, go see as many Preston Sturges movies as you can.

Monday Movies Post

Ever heard of a movie called "Men Must Fight"? It's an MGM film from 1933, directed by Edgar Selwyn (from a play by Reginald Lawrence and S. K. Lauren). Here's the original NYT review. The main person you're likely to recognize is Lewis Stone, who plays the Secretary of State; also in it is Robert Young, in a brief part, and Hedda Hopper, three years before she transitioned from actor to gossip columnist. You may also recognize Robert Greig, a large man who is, as usual, cast as a butler (he's in The Lady Eve and other Preston Sturges movies); also, May Robson, who plays Stone's mother, you should know from "Bringing Up Baby." The star, Diana Wynyard, is I suppose famous for the British version of "Gaslight."

I won't go through the plot, but it's essentially an argument between female pacifism and male honor. I have no idea how the original play balanced it, but here the argument is awfully close to a draw. Stone, the Secretary of State, spends his career making peace, but war comes in futuristic 1940 and he rallies to his duty -- while his wife opposes him both in public (she leads antiwar rallies) and within the family, where they fight for the loyalty of their son. Will he remain a pacifist, or will he enlist?

As a movie, it has the advantages and disadvantages of its time. It's very talky; they move the action around a fair amount, but it still has the sensibility of a theatrical play. Which obviously worked sometimes, but falls short in many films of that era. What "Men Must Fight" does have going for it are special effects, including a spectacular enemy air raid on New York City. Okay, it's not 21st century effects, or even 1970s effects, but it's still fun. As is the television in their 1940 "future" -- I wonder if this movie features the first-ever time anyone ever tossed something through a TV screen out of anger.

The contest between pacifism and honor, at least in my reading, was even enough that I was never really sure which side the movie was on, although I wouldn't say it's a particularly deep study of the subject. Alas, it's a bit undermined, to my eyes, at least, because Stone versus Wynyard is an unfair match; Stone is a pure screen actor, while Wynyard (at least here) seems theatrical, in that awkward way that many stars of the era had.

What's interesting is that the plot largely serves to take a group of people who have various attitudes towards patriotism and war and eventually realign them strictly on gender lines. That is, Stone is a man of peace between the wars, but once war threatens he's honor-bound to support it; the suggestion that he should resign in protest is beyond his understanding. Other characters, too, switch sides as the move goes along. The gender politics is made explicit in the final scene...well, that, and the title. Indeed, the title basically is the argument of the story; men, we're told, really must (by their natures) fight.

(By the way, Wynyard's character is could easily be the inspiration for Joan Collins in "City on the Edge of Forever." Not saying she was, at all, just the she could have been).

I said it had the advantages of the era; one of them is that it's short and efficient, at just 72 minutes. Certainly held my attention. That said, it's by no means a great movie. I'll give it a very mild recommendation; you'll probably find it worth the hour plus if you're particularly interested in what folks in 1933 through of war, or if you're interested in gender and politics of that era.

Monday Movie Post

Hey, a Monday Movie Post that's not just another Reagan movie! How about that.

Today's movie is Network, from 1976, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky. I hadn't seen it for years, but I've been meaning to rewatch ever since the Glenn Beck fad a couple of years ago, and I finally got around to it.

Eh. As a movie, my sense is that it doesn't really hold up well. It's a weird mixture of two genres -- the paranoid thriller of the early and mid 1970s, and the TV news in decline drama that we've been living with, probably, since the 1940s. Or maybe this is when the TV news in decline drama began; I guess I'm not really aware of one preceding it off the top of my head, but I suspect they were around earlier. Anyway, I guess in 1976 people found the satire of "TV news is really just another form of entertainment" to be a big deal, but from our perspective it seems to me that they were missing the point.

The famous parts of the movie, especially the "Mad as Hell" rant, are justly famous, and work more or less as well now as they probably did then. But as a whole I found it a bit of a mess...some of it is clearly over-the-top satire, some of it is clearly not, and the two don't mesh well. At least as far as I could tell all the personal stuff with William Holden's character -- his marriage, his affair with Faye Dunaway -- didn't appear to me to be over-the-top satire.

As far as the politics of it: the core of the politics is the same sinister, amoral, corporate omnipotence and the hopelessness of ordinary people to defy it that shows up in quite a few movies of the era. Politics is hopelessly outdated in the face of it, with nation-states themselves outmoded; the only question for individuals in these movies is whether they'll go along or not, and it rarely goes well for those who don't. See, for example, The Parallax View -- or, for more fun, Rollerball. Among others.

So what I want to know: why was that particular vision so popular in the early and mid 1970s -- and what killed it off? It may have to do with changes in the movies rather than changes in politics, I suppose, and perhaps I 'm just not aware of later examples, but I can't think of any.

The other bit of interest here is TV, and especially Howard Beale, the mad prophet. He's not nearly as slick as Glenn Beck; Beale is a boring old news anchor who suddenly goes nuts (or whatever), unlike Beck's background in entertainment radio and obvious show biz training. And yet certainly they share quite a bit.

I guess what it comes down to is that I only have a very mild recommendation for it. It's fine; if you like movies from that era it's surely not in the top tier, but it's okay. It's not among my favorite Faye Dunaway performances, although I can always watch her; Robert Duvall is just about wasted, and I thought Holden didn't really do what he needed to. But Peter Finch is truly wonderful.

Monday Movie Post

I haven't been doing these for a while, mostly because I just haven't been watching a lot of political movies lately. Not sure why...part of it is what I've been re-watching with the kids (I suppose you could do a political analysis of Vertigo or Clueless, and I'm certain you could with Chinatown, but I didn't have much interest). I did just re-watch Branagh's As You Like It (which I absolutely love), and it sort of has politics in it, but...well, not especially, I don't think.

At any rate, I did get around to watching a couple of Reagan movies, fortunately -- the second and third of the four Brass Bancroft efforts. First, "Code of the Secret Service," and then "Smashing the Money Ring," both from 1939.

There's hardly anything to "Code" (among other things, it clocks in at just under 60 minutes), but if you want a sense of what the studios saw in Reagan, it's as good as anything. It's pretty clear what Reagan has going for him: he's extremely charming and likable. As a tough guy -- and he has several chases and fights -- he's...well, he's up to it, and throws himself into it as much as he can, but he's mostly charming and likable. "Smashing" is a bit less fun. As far as Reagan, what this one has going for it is that he goes undercover and has to pass as a hardened criminal. Fortunately for him, crooks in 1939 were easily fooled by a scowl and...well, that's about it; Reagan doesn't have much more than that as far as passing for a thug.

Really, the Brass Bancroft movie that you want to see is the final one, Murder in the Air, which was a war picture about a super-scientific death ray. Not because it's the best; I think "Code" was probably a bit better. But because, c'mon, Reagan and a super-scientific death ray. But if you want to know what Reagan the actor was all about and you're flipping past Turner and it's on, I'd say Code of the Secret Service is about as good as anything.

Oh, plus he's in Mexico for almost all of it, so you get to enjoy Hollywood's 1939 version of Mexicans.

Both of these are actually the same year as "Brother Rat," which I've talked about before, but in these Reagan's the star, and he pulls it off perfectly well. Is "Code of the Secret Service" a great movie? Not even close. But, again, if you want to get to know Reagan the youngish actor, it's not a bad choice. And it certainly is better than the one where he played Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Monday Movie Post

There are essentially two things good about Political Animals, the recent six-episode miniseries on USA. Make that three things: six-episode length is excellent (I just finished State of Play, also. Six episodes is excellent).

The other two things? Well, we get to watch Sigourney Weaver, which is always a great thing. I've actually missed a lot of highlights of Weaver's career, and this reminds me that I really should seek out more of her stuff. Fans of Washington movies will know that she was wonderful in "Dave," but she's even better in this.

And the last worthwhile thing about it, as Alyssa Rosenberg pointed out, is that it's a rare entertainment about powerful, smart, capable, political women. It has a bit of an aspect of a feminist fantasy to it...at each turn, the women wind up triumphing, always (as Rosenberg noted) with the perfect zinger, the perfect line. Since we have so few of these, it's refreshing and very welcome.

(Warning: the rest of this contains spoilers, so if you care...)

That extends all the way to the end, at least in some ways. The reporter who is the second lead character after Weaver misbehaves in various ways, including sleeping with people she shouldn't sleep with -- except in this version, she comes out of it pretty much just fine, while her boss loses his job. This, shall we say, does not happen often on TV. So all of this is good: the women are allowed to be strong but also to fail at some things, and without falling back on men saving them or having them inordinately punished.

And yet...well, several things.

First: as a show, it's a mess. I guess I should back up a bit...I haven't mentioned the main conceit, which is that Weaver is playing (a version of) Hillary Clinton -- former first lady, lost a tough nomination fight, is now Secretary of State. Anyway, instead of one daughter, Hillary and Bill have a soap opera family of two sons who  would fit right in with the Tates and the Campbells, except that those characters were better developed and more interesting. Six episodes is not enough time for, say, the gay suicidal drug-addict son to be anything more than awful. So as a show, you have to really want your feminist political power fantasy (and really enjoy Weaver) to make the rest tolerable.

The second thing is that the Hillary wish fulfillment (she's going to challenge the president who beat her for re-nomination) makes the feminist wish-fulfillment pretty awkward, or at least so it seemed to me. Yes, it's cute to see this version of Hillary dump her Bill, although as the show goes on you wonder what the point is, since they're basically back together. Beyond that, however, what struck me is that we sort of have to buy into that Bill is his worst image, and of course Hillary should have been president instead of Obama. Not to mention that some people might not actually like Hillary because they're, well, Republicans; the only Republican we get to know is not exactly impressive. If it was a bit less about Bill and Hillary in all but name then I don't think it would be a problem, but I think it is, here. So: when in a late episode she basically shames the not-Obama president into being a good president after all, and teaches him how to do it, I just couldn't get past how condescending it was to real-Obama, even though the show's character shares neither ethnicity nor any other obvious traits with the real thing.

And then...well, the thing sort of collapses on itself eventually. The big plot conflict for Weaver's Elaine Barrish is that she wants to run for president again even though it will probably destroy both of her (adult) sons. Wait, what? What's that doing in here? Do we really need to have an exaggerated career/mother conflict? And the resolution in the final episode is just awful: as both of her sons' lives collapse, she decides to bow out after all...although only to run for vice president, which apparently wouldn't be hard on her family at all...except that then the president up and dies and leaves the villainous VP in change, and now she's just got to run after all. Which I think, although I couldn't quite tell, was supposed to be okay because now she's going to do it because the country needed her and not because it turns out she was just being ambitious with her earlier decision to run. If that's what we're supposed to believe, it's awful: the whole point of the piece is presumably that her ambition is a good thing. Anyway, it would have worked fine if the sons had less desperate problems, but as it is we're ping-ponged rapidly from being told that it's okay for her to sacrifice her ambition for her family to being told that she needs to do it anyway.

Perhaps I'm asking too much of a show on USA. To their credit, I thought the political (unlike the personal) twists and turns were at least plausibly okay. I just wish that more of it had been watchable, and that the ending wasn't as messed up as it was.

Monday Movie Post

And, once again, I'm going to try to get back to doing these, at least occasionally. I actually have a couple things I've watched that I want to write up, but I never seem to get around to it these days. So today I have a cheat to get me back doing it, and I'll see how it goes.

That is, Jake Tapper did a thing about his "ten favorite" political movies. So I don't like to do personal favorite lists, but I thought it would be fun to see if I can top each one on his list.

First, the caveats. The main thing is that he just said they were his favorites, and so I certainly don't imply any criticism when I try to top them -- he's not claiming these are the best, either as movies or in their political meaning. Everyone is entitled to their favorites. Second, his ground rules were that it has to be narrowly political, which seems to be that it has to be set in either electoral politics or government. As he notes, that excludes something such as The Godfather (indeed, I think Godfather II fits under his definition, but I'll exclude it to stick with the spirit of his list). And I think by his definition war pictures have to be at least partially about high government officials; no Casablanca. Oh, and he specified no documentaries. And I guess they have to be movies, so I can't slip "Yes, Minister" or "The Wire" in here.

So I'll try to come up with either with a better movie or a movie with better politics content. Each entry starts with Tapper's choice, and then tops it. Sorry, long-time readers -- I've talked about most of these before, but maybe it'll get me back to doing movie posts more often.

10. In the Loop. One of two I haven't seen, so I'm going to have trouble coming up with a comp and won't know if I like it better. So I'll cheat and just toss out a great movie with enough politics to qualify: Citizen Kane. But after this one, they have to be matches in some way.

9. The Parallax View. Regular readers know I'm a big Beatty fan, but even I don't think it's much of a movie. Conspiracy, Beatty...this one's easy -- Bulworth is a far better movie, even if it ultimately falls short of greatness thanks to some Mr. Smithism and a bit too much conspiracy.

8. Z. The other one I haven't seen. Small country, repression, leftists: no one does that better than Life of Brian.

7. Dr. Strangelove. Can't really top it, I suppose. Still...I'm going to assume that Kubrick's two other anti-war movies, Full Metal Jacket and Paths of Glory, don't qualify; if they did, I could make a case for either of them. Instead, I'll argue for Sparticus, which surely does qualify. Because sometimes you're in the mood for an epic, and because it's about the best movie I can think of for liberal interventionists, and they should get something. Also because Charles Laughton is so wonderful in it.

6. Bananas. Terrific movie, if not quite as good as Love and Death...but, c'mon, Woody Allen really has absolutely no interest in politics at all, even if revolutions and dictators and Napoleon show up. Yes, it has one great political moment (the bit about the underwear), but so does History of the World Part I (it's good to be the king). Let's see: guy from an imperial power actually not very interested in politics but the romance of it intersects with how he works out his personal issues -- is it Bananas, or is it Lawrence of Arabia? Not sure that Lawrence is a great political movie, but it is a great movie, and it's at least as political as Bananas.

5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Again, regular readers kmow my views on this: Sturges easily trumps Capra.  Hail the Conquering Hero, or The Great McGinty? (Again, I don't think Sullivan's Travels qualifies here). Gotta be McGinty -- not quite as good a movie as Hero (or Mr. Smith, for that matter), but a great rumination on political ethics by one of the best political directors.

4. Charlie Wilson's War. Odd pick; it's okay, I guess, but I found it entirely forgettable. Do you think the rules allow for Three Kings here? Three Kings is a good comp, I'd say, and a much better movie.

3. Wag the Dog. The only one I'd call a really awful selection; I can excuse Mr. Smith because it is a very good movie, but this one is just awful. Get some real politics: watch Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

2. All the President's Men. A fine movie all around...but one of the easiest to top, with Dick.

1. The Candidate. A fine choice for the highest spot on a favorite's list -- it's not, really, a great movie, but it's awful fun, and none do a better job in getting into a politician's head, even if a lot of the details aren't all that realistic. Hey, you now what that also describes? Henry V. As usual, Branagh's version. Henry is, to me, as great a political play as there ever has been, and I think Branagh's interpretation is concerned with politics a lot more than Olivier's -- although you should see both.

Catch of the Day

Alyssa Rosenberg watches a Lou Dobbs rant about...The Lorax and The Borrowers. Well, actually, about two new movies based on those classic books, which were apparently part of some sort of obscure left-wing conspiracy to brainwash the youth of America. As Rosenberg says:

But the lesson here is less that Dobbs is reaching to make his case in this particular instance. It’s how desperate conservatives are to marginalize some totally reasonable ideas. You can see this sort of thinking in the paranoid argument that bike lanes are part of a United Nations plot to control American communities or the extreme reaction to taxation. These are the sorts of arguments people turn to when they’re out of good, rational ideas to put up against something they just don’t want to happen, because it makes them angry or uncomfortable.

What I'd add are two things. One is that if you have a partisan press which makes most of its money off of chumps who are eager to believe the wildest things out there, then you have very little incentive to try for anything better. Real policy, and even real critiques of policy or politicians or culture, is hard. Making stuff up is a lot easier, and if your audience doesn't care and no one on your side is willing to call you out on it, then there's just a lot of incentive to take the easy road.

The other thing, and I said this the other day but it bears repeating, is that this kind of junk is generated naturally on all sides of the partisan divide. The difference, and it's a huge one, is that Democrats for the most part ignore or condemn such things when they arise on the left, but Republicans? Not so much. So you have a presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, who is peddling outright fantasies about euthanasia in the Netherlands, and we have another whose entire foreign policy case to the American people is based on an complete myth about "apology tours."

So are they "out of good, rational ideas"? Or just lazy because their market encourages it? Or both? Either way, it's sad and pathetic, and not good at all for producing viable public policy, conservative or liberal.

And: great catch!

Unleash Chiang/Chang/Shang!!!

By far the funniest thing of the day is the revelation that, through the Bush family, Chiang Kai-shek has morphed into "a mythical conservative warrior." That's a link to Dan Larison's fine discussion, which will also link you way back to Brad DeLong's original catch on this from way back in 2005. There's some question as to whether Jeb Bush knew the origin of the phrase "unleashing Chiang" or not, with Tim Noah believing that Jeb did but Marco Rubio didn't. Click over and read the whole, wonderful, story.

All I can say is: Shaka, when the walls fell.

I'll also add, for whatever it's worth, that Li Shang is a hero in the excellent 1998 Disney movie "Mulan." He's not exactly a mythical conservative warrior, but he is a warrior, and it is a myth, although Jeb's kids were a bit too old to have gone with him to see it. Despite singing like Donny Osmond.  Could Disney's Shang have somehow combined with G.H.W. Bush's Chiang? I sure am curious.

Less relevantly, I see that Grandmother Fa in that movie was voiced by June Foray and sung by Marni Nixon. Wow! You're not going to get better than that...my sense is that Mulan hasn't quite been as successful as some of the others of that era, but in my view it's right in the first tier with Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid.

Not a Monday Movie Post

OK, I've just struggled a lot to get back into the rhythm of doing Monday Movie Posts. I'm not sure whether very many readers care, but I'll try to get back to it. I would blame the GOP debates (which knock out an average of one movie-length time slot a week)...really, I've just been watching other things. I do have a half-finished post about that awful Kelsey Grammer show, so I should finish it one of these weeks. I have another excuse...my DVR died suddenly a couple weeks ago, and with it a couple dozen or so movies I had saved to watch for Monday Movie Posts. But it's not much of an excuse, since TCM keeps showing at least one a week that I could do, and, well, I haven't, yet.

I should get to the point -- if you really want some very brief movies stuff from me, head over to Salon, where they've put together a slideshow of favorite "election entertainment" from various people and they were nice enough to ask me to participate. I don't know that it's really my favorite as such, but I picked "The Great McGinty" and also mentioned "Hail the Conquering Hero" -- both are movies I've highly recommended here in the past. Take a look at what others picked. I'm very skeptical of "Primary Colors" (the movie), although I've never seen it or read the book, so I could be wrong and I'm not a huge fan of "The Best Man," but other than that there are lots of good picks to check out. Might as well open it up to everyone: I was asked to "name [my] favorite election- or campaign-related movie, novel, or TV show." Got one?

Monday Movie Post

Yes, I know it isn't actually Monday, but since I just saw one of these this week...how about some of my favorite movie and TV election returns? Either watching the returns on TV, or waiting for the results, or counting the ballots...No particular order, but:

1. Citizen Kane. I'm a big fan of the two newspaper front pages, ready to go: "Kane Elected" or "Fraud at Polls"

2. Battlestar Galactica, Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2. Avoiding spoilers, but I'm not sure I totally bought the outcome of the Adama/Roslin scene.

3. The Candidate. Not the justly famous last line, but the great cliche stuff from during the day.

4. Mary Tyler Moore show, The Snow Must Go On.

5. Election. I've been meaning to watch this again so I can do a post on it. My memory of it was that it was an excellent movie, but not particularly interesting for politics. Certainly a memorable vote count, though.

6. NewsRadio, Who's the Boss, Part 2. And I still think Bill voted for Dave, don't you?

7. Columbo, Candidate for Crime.

8. The Wire, Margin of Error. By the way, I've finally finished Season 4 and just began Season 5, but I keep getting distracted by one thing or another.

9. Mad Men, Nixon vs. Kennedy. OK, the election returns are incidental to the episode, but a good one nonetheless.

10. The West Wing, various episodes...actually, don't really have one I like all that much, but I'm running low here.

What am I forgetting? What are your favorites?

Monday Movie Post

Ready? I am -- I'm going to try to revive this feature, only slightly because the great Seth Masket has been putting me to shame lately with a few great posts.

So: while Seth is up to date and all with a post on a movie currently in theaters, what I watched for this...well, it's not recent. It's Louisiana Purchase, a Bob Hope movie from 1941 (from Paramount).

Okay, here goes. First the movie...I don't know. I really don't get Bob Hope -- that is, what all the fuss was about. I sort of get him as an Oscar host, or something like that, but as a major movie star? So this is a silly little comedy/romance/musical with really very little going for it, as a movie. At least unless you love Bob Hope, I guess. Well, there are Irving Berlin songs, but to tell the truth they didn't do much for me. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.

As far as the politics...it's about a crooked scam that Hope is the inadvertent front man for, and the US Senator who comes to New Orleans to expose it. As regular readers know, I love stuff about corruption, but I'm not really seeing much of interest here. I suppose the obvious hook, however, is that it ends with a Jimmy Stewart type filibuster, by Hope (who is in the Louisiana legislature)...no, I have no idea whether LA had filibusters then or now, but if you want a (slightly) comic take on the classic Jimmy Stewart filibuster, here's your movie. Again, it's a 1941 movie, just two years after Mr. Smith.

What I actually found interesting were two jokes. I have no idea how to properly interpret them, but (and again, 1941) I thought they were worth the trip. My transcription, if I get any of it wrong:

Marina von Minden (a refugee from Vienna):
  I have my first citizen papers already.
  In a few years, I get my second papers.
  And then I go on...relief.
  Heil Roosevelt!

Republican US Senator Oliver Loganberrry:  
  ...ah, Coolidge and Hoover.
  Well, in those days it was still legal for a Republican to be President.
Yvonne Bordelaise:
  Why, isn't it legal anymore?
Loganberry:
  It hasn't come up recently.
  But if it ever does, I don't think the new Supreme Court would declare it Constitutional.

So: I can't really recommend this one, but as I said I'm just not a huge Bob Hope fan, so perhaps others would like it more than I did. It's fine, but just not something that I'd go out of my way for at all. As for the politics...mostly if you're really interested in popular representations of filibusters. But still, I thought the FDR jokes were interesting, so that made it worth it for me.

I have a few things stacked up to watch, so perhaps I'll get back to making this feature more regular for a while, at least during the off-season.

Someone Needs to See "Bulworth" Again

First Read (Chuck Todd et al.) really, really, really has this wrong (via Goddard):

Newt Gingrich was provocative to the point of looking like the “Bulworth” character (suggesting that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be jailed).

I normally like Chuck Todd, but...huh? The point of "Bulworth" was that Warren Beatty's character was blurting out the things he was really thinking, and things which (at least from the movie's point of view) are true -- things that normal politicians won't say because they'll offend the people they're attempting to appeal to. So at a fundraiser:

My guys are not stupid. They always put the big Jews on my schedule. You're mostly Jews, right? Three out of four of you? [brandishes speech]
I bet Murphy put something bad about Farrakhan in here for you!

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, makes stuff up that appeal to the prejudices of his audience. It's the exact opposite of Bulworth! Even if what he's saying was true, there's no Bulworth in bashing Frank and Dodd to a GOP electorate.

Senator Jay Bulworth is one of my favorite political movie/TV characters, and the idea that Newt has anything in common with him at all really just shouldn't stand. Of course, long time readers will know that Plain Blog already has cast Newt as Tom P. Baxter, because he's a total fraud. But he certainly isn't a Bulworth.  Not good, First Read.

Q Day 3: Books!

Paul asks:

Do you have a list of books about politics that you would recommend? You have mentioned Tell Newt to Shut Up and Rchard Ben Cramer's What it Takes, and I was wondering what others you would recommend.

And I have a question via email that covers similar ground, asking for my "desert-island top-five books and movies/shows on politics/political science?"

Hmm....I don't really believe in top fives, but I'll give the general question a shot. Let's see...

You know, I don't know that political science works quite that way...there's a lot of important stuff that's in articles, not books, for one thing, and for another it sort of depends on what you're interested in; I mean, for parties I could send you to Nelson Polsby or Austin Ranney or E.E. Schattschnieder, or John Aldrich or Joseph Schlesinger or Anthony Downs, or the party network stuff from Seth Masket and Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller, but that's far more than five and it's just party and party theory stuff.  (I will say that way more people interested in American political parties should read Alan Ware, but even though his books about American party history are easily accessible and well-written it's still not exactly a useful recommendation to non-academics, I suppose).

OK, this isn't getting anywhere. Here are a few lists. Not greatest, but great:

Five great books that I think people that I don't think I've mentioned too many times: Garry Wills, Nixon Agonisties (Nixon, but also 1968 and more); John Jacobs, A Rage for Justice (about Phillip Burton); Richard Fenno, Going Home (representation and African American Members of Congress); Robert Caro, The Power Broker (Robert Moses); and Taylor Branch, The Clinton Tapes, which I'm unfortunately still only halfway through, but it's second-to-top of my book pile, right after Bob Mould's book...blogging, unfortunately, or at least in my case, is really, really, really bad for book reading.

Five great books about democracy, justice, and other good stuff like that: Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democracy; Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses; Madison et al., The Federalist Papers; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution; Hanna Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice.

Five great movies/shows about politics: Henry V (d. Branagh); The Great McGinty (d. Sturges); Battlestar Gallactica/ST: Deep Space Nine (Ron Moore); Yes, Minister (written by Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn); and I'll go with The Times of Harvey Milk (d. Epstein). By the way, I'm going to try hard to get back to Monday Movie Posts now that baseball season is over, and that I've finally reached Season 5 of The Wire.

I hope people will chime in with more good suggestions in comments.

Catch of the Day

Steve Benen calls out WaPo's Richard Cohen -- the "hackiest pundit in America' -- for saying that Rick Perry looks like a president while Michele Bachmann doesn't.

What's amazing here isn't just that Cohen's instinctive sexist and racist assumptions (and, really, there's no other way to put it) aren't just several years behind the reality of a world in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the two most likely to win presidential candidates last time around, but that this sort of thinking is so far behind where most of the culture is. Yes, once upon a time movie presidents all looked like Henry Fonda and Walter Huston. But a quick check of wikipedia reveals that recent presidents have included Danny Glover, Blair Underwood, Louis Gossett, Jr., Chris Rock, Michael Dorn, Morgan Freeman, Jimmy Smits, Geena Davis, Patricia Wettig...do I need to go on? Well, I suppose I should mention Mary McDonnell, although I suppose that doesn't count on a technicality, but still...it's worth mentioning that not all presidents are glamorous. At any rate, yes there are still plenty of James Cromwells and James Caans, but Hollywood loves its black presidents, and is gradually getting used to the idea of women in the White House, too. Which means that Richard Cohen is not only years behind reality, but he's also years behind where the rest of the culture is.

Catch of the Day

Dave Weigel:

Moody's is becoming that kid from "Better off Dead" who wanted the two dollars.

He's referring to this. My own feeling is that the behavior of the ratings agencies through this thing, such as this episode, really was about as good as their behavior has always (at least in the last few years) been: a disgrace. I'd like to see Democratic Senators haul them all up for a hearing, to question why they suddenly discovered the debt just when it meant making the debt limit battle a bit more difficult. Of course, regular readers will know what I don't consider the federal government debt to be a significant problem, other than to the extent that policy makers foolishly adopt austerity programs when they shouldn't be. So your mileage may vary.

Regardless -- Weigel gets the CotD mainly because I'm always for a Savage Steve Holland reference. Well, that, and I wanted to make the Senate hearings point. Well, mostly the Savage Steve Holland thing. I just watched "How I Got Into College," the third and least great of his three great movies, again, and so I was all primed for it.

Oh -- great catch!

Monday Movie Post

I don't usually cover documentaries with these posts...I'm not sure why; there are some good ones that I've seen, and others I'm confident are very good that I haven't had a chance to see yet. I do remember writing about the absolutely must-see Times of Harvey Milk. But that's about it.

Anyway, I stumbled into one recently, and so here's a second documentary Monday Movie Post. It's The City, from 1939 -- apparently prepared for showing at the World's Fair (in New York) that year. Did I say documentary? Really, just straightforward propaganda, proselytizing against modern American large cities and in favor of invented, planned, communities, in particular (unnamed in the film) Greenbelt, Maryland. Indeed, it's written by the urban reformer Lewis Mumford, so, well, that's what you're getting.

First, about the movie: it's an odd bird indeed. It's highly stylized, very much a self-conscious art film, I'd say (and I know nothing whatsoever about 1930s documentaries, so this is all just my very uninformed reaction). Lots of unusual cuts and jumps, especially in the middle section -- about modern urban living -- designed to make city life as people then knew it as jarring and unpleasant as possible. That's set against the early section set in pre-urban America and the final section in beautiful, peaceful, sanitized, couldn't-be-whiter, Greenbelt.

The other thing about this as a movie is that it heavily features, and in fact is choreographed around, an original work by Aaron Copland, so if that interests you then you'll want to see it.

As far as the politics of the movie are concerned, there's really two things I got out of watching it. One is that the language of the narration is extraordinarily collective, or community, oriented. Just very different than anything that would be made today, at least in my experience. Granted, it's made by people on the left (the narrator would later be blacklisted, per imdb), but I don't think that today's US lefties really sound like that, at all.

The main reason, however, to watch The City if one is at all interested in the political culture and American urban thought is just how viciously anti-city it is. The section set in modern cities (apparently, again per imdb, it's filmed in Pittsburgh) is just brutal. It begins in slums, which are presented as typical of urban living. But the more devastating sections, at least in intent I'm sure, are devoted to showing the normal, middle-class life of the city as highly inhuman: too crowded, too regimented, too machine-like.

Oh, and it's short, so you don't have much to lose. As a movie, it's a curiosity, and not really worth bothering with unless you're a major Copland fan, in which case you should track it down. For the politics, I'd say it's a high-recommend, and perhaps even a must-see, if you're interested in American ideas about cities. Especially if you like cities; it's important to know what you're up against.

Monday Movie Post

Sometimes I talk about famous movies or shows; sometimes it's the obscure ones. Today, the latter: Washington Story, from 1952. Deservedly obscure, although I'll tell you down in the last paragraph why it's worth watching anyway.

Let's see...as a movie, it's really not much. Patricia Neal is fine as a cynical reporter who sets out to do a hatchet job on a Member of Congress only to...well, you know, don't you. She's fine, although not really sufficiently tough in the first half hour to make the inevitable reversal as entertaining as it should be. But the real problem with the movie is the Kennedy-esque Massachusetts Democrat she winds up with, as played by Van Johnson. Johnson just isn't up for it. We're supposed to care about what happens to him, and, well, in my view anyway, there's just nothing going on there. Old pro Louis Calhern puts a little zip in things -- you know him; he was among other things Ambassador Trentino in Duck Soup, and Uncle Willy in High Society. And Philip Ober helps.  But with a blank in the middle it's hard to get too involved.

By the way, I'm not at all familiar with writer-directer Robert Pirosh (nor are many; he has no bio info at imdb), but for what it's worth he contributed writing to Night at the Opera, Day at the Races, The Wizard of Oz...and, among other things, three episodes of the 1970s Ellery Queen TV series. Not bad!

You would think that I'd like the politics of it, too, given that not only the politicians but even the lobbyists turn out to be good guys, but it's more of a Cold War gee-whiz whitewashing of politics than an honest examination of the conflicts and hard choices that go into real politics (Want a second opinion? Here's the original NYT review). Indeed, what's frustrating on that score is that even though special interests in this movie are improbable white hats, what's left of dramatic tension remains the question of whether Van Johnson will Do The Right Thing, even at a cost to his career (although even that is drained of power, since it turns out that his long-term career will be enhanced by following the path of virtue). This is, of course, Mr. Smithism; there's always a Right Thing and a Wrong Thing for pols to do. In real politics, of course, things just aren't like that, at least most of the time.

So why is Washington Story worth talking about? Because it has one thing well worth seeing. It was in large part filmed on location, in the Capitol. Just terrific shots of pretty much the whole Capitol complex, as it was in winter 1951-1952. Very, very fun. Good enough to overcome a dud of a movie? Sure, especially at a crisp 81 minutes. I wouldn't go very far out of my way to see it, but if you're a fan of the Capitol and notice it coming around on TCM, I'd recommend it.

Monday Movie Post

I thought a lot about whether I had anything to say about Caprica, the ill-fated Battlestar Gallactica prequel. I had written about Ron Moore earlier, about Gallactica and his earlier show, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (as I said then, there's enough thematic overlap that I've chosen to believe that Moore is responsible for all the stuff I like in DS9, whatever the actual facts are. Anyway, I figured I'd write about Caprica, but when I got around to watching the final episodes, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to say about its politics, and decided to walk away...until Seth Masket posted an interesting item on the show, which got me thinking again until I realized what's interesting, to me at least, about it.

When I wrote about BSG/DS9 earlier, I focused on the religion and politics aspects, which I think is truly fascinating about the two shows. I also mentioned the question of terrorism in both shows, and questions about war and politics more generally. What I didn't really talk about is a major theme of Gallactica and a fairly important one in DS9: military/civilian relations.

What's odd, then, about Caprica is that outside of the police and some brief allusions to the military, there's very little in the way of the government in the series. The show is certainly, I think, set in the world of politics (terrorism is a major theme of this series too), and continues Moore's interest in religion and politics, but there are no politicians here. Of course, in an aborted series such as this one, you can only speculate about what would have been added in seasons two and more, and therefore it's always dicey to speculate about the meaning of something missing from what we did see, but, well, I'll do it anyway.

Moore's characters are, it seems to me, rather obsessed with governing a world in which formal politics -- which presumably exists -- is little more than fodder for Jay Leno; it isn't connected with the actual, real politics of people's lives. What the characters are doing here is intensely political, whether it's the monotheists terrorism, or Daniel's world-creation, or the struggles of the Adama clan within their mob, which like the mob in The Godfather is certainly presented as sort of alternate politics for those who are dismissed from the normal political world. All of which, in a way, is paralleled by the anarchic nihilism of V-World.

If this is a show, then, about a culture that is so corrupt to the core that it (almost?) deserves to be destroyed a few years down the road (which certainly has to be at least one interpretation of what's going on), then the challenge is to figure out what, exactly is corrupt about that sort of politics. Is it that the offscreen government has become what Jay Leno says our government has become, a corrupt, irrelevant punch line? Is it the disconnect between the intensely political nature of our characters -- and, really, the more I think about it the more I'm convinced that they are intensely political -- and the private, clannish, or even purely personal arenas in which they play out their political instincts?

I'm going to stop with those questions, and not try to write answers, because this is going to be long enough already. Meanwhile, some business to take care of. It's really hard to evaluate a show that's as truncated as this one turned out to be. I can say that unlike Gallactica (and more like DS9), the cast of this one, it seems to me, was decidedly mixed. I have very little use for Eric Stoltz, who I guess was more or less the star, and of the front-line players, I'm not sure I'd put anyone in the category of outstanding. The show had a lot of trouble juggling plot lines, exemplified by poor forgotten Tamara, who was sometimes a major character and then sometimes was entirely ignored. Some of that, of course, might have been cleared up had they had more time. The world-building stuff, I thought, worked a lot less well off the enclosed environment of Gallactica, with some of the "just like us, only a bit off" things working, but others, to me at least, seeming forced.

I also thought that the portrayal of religion was less interesting than in either Gallactica or DS9 -- with the obvious caveat that they obviously were going to expand it had the series continued. I guess in Caprica, the monotheists always seemed to me a lot more like terrorists with a religious excuse for self-aggrandizement than like believers who were led to places they would never have gone were it not for their belief. Nor did this show, unlike the other two, really explore different shades and intensities of religious experience.

All told, it's a hard show to recommend, I suppose, although I certainly enjoyed it enough that I'm glad I watched it, and I wish it had continued (although part of that, no doubt, is the trust that Moore -- and collaborators, including Jane Espenson -- have built up over time). If you're not inclined to enjoy science fiction settings, this is probably one to skip, but if you tailed off after the first few episodes, I'd probably recommend coming back and watching through the season, albeit without especially high expectations.

Read Stuff, You Should

Recommended reading in the aftermath of the terrible event in Tucson.

1.  On the question of rhetoric and the atmosphere it creates, I highly recommend Conor Friedersdorf's post, "Tone Versus Substance."

2.  For an introduction to social science findings on related questions, John Sides has a good post over at the Monkey Cage.  While you're over there, see Henry Farrell show how to disentangle causal relationships; see also Brendon Nyhan's similar points.

3.  Don't miss Jonathan Cohn on public policy and mental illness.

I think that's enough.  Regular readers will know that I was born and raised in Phoenix, and I'm certainly as embarrassed as I've ever been to be an Arizonan.  So I'll end with something more positive: as far as I'm aware, the most fun movie ever set in Tuscon is one of the great 1980s teen pictures, the excellently enjoyable "Can't Buy Me Love," featuring Patrick "Lawn Boy" Dempsey long before his second round of fame.   Really, if I have to debate anything right now, I'd much rather it be the relative merits of John Hughes vs. non-John Hughes 1980s teen movies (my position?  My top ten of 1980s teen movies would have exactly zero John Hughes efforts.  Feel free to rip me to shreds in comments; this is the kind of fighting words that feel appropriate right now, at least to me).

Monday Movies Post

Well, I saw two Eddie Albert movies in the past week.  The better of the two was Escape From Witch Mountain...it's not as good as The Love Bug or The Parent Trap, but it sure is a lot better than most of that group.  But that's not what I'm going to write about.

No, today's movie has even less to do with politics than Witch Mountain.  It's Brother Rat and a Baby, from 1940, which is a sequel to 1938's Brother Rat, which is chiefly known for being the movie in which Ronald Reagan met Jane Wyman.   Brother Rat and a Baby?  Well, I doubt if it's known for anything at all, but TMC had it recently, and I'll watch any Reagan movie if I get a chance.

Alas, it's pretty much of a mess.  Reagan is the third-billed (male) actor, behind Wayne Morris and Albert.  And I have to say, he does virtually nothing with the role...pretty much disappears from the movie.  I'd follow Garry Wills on this: Reagan was really at his best when he was playing against type: as the wild friend to the mama's boy in King's Row, Reagan's congeniality makes it clear that the "bad" boy is just living life, not bad at all.  Here, Reagan plays the well-behaved one to Wayne Morris's schemer, and there's not much there but some mannered fussing and worrying.

The movie itself?  Well, there's a plot of sorts, but it's not what you're watching for -- the point of the movie is the madcap situations, and they're just not really madcap enough to hold anyone's attention.  Morris and Albert give it their best, and the actresses are okay but forgettable (and, really, they're not asked to do much).  Oh, and there's a baby, and he's supposed to be cute, adorable, and a big addition to the madcap, but it just doesn't work.

So, see it if you're a Reagan completist, but it's not one of those that really adds to your understanding of either Reagan the politician or Reagan the actor.  As I've said before, the essential ones after King's Row are probably Hellcats of the Navy, Knute Rockne, and Murder in the Air; or, if you want an obscure one, try Juke Girl.  And for all I know, Brother Rat is good; it certainly was good enough to earn a sequel.  Their mistake.  Stick to Witch Mountain.