All the King's Men (1949)

Posted by Ox

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

So wrote Lord Acton in a letter in 1887, and that might be a good capsule description of this excellent movie which garnered several Academy awards and many nominations in 1950. I've never read Robert Penn Warren's novel,but intend to do so after watching the movie.

It has to be sort of a borderline Noir, although Spencer Selby's bookplaces it in the Noir canon. The style of the movie is sort of semi-documentary, with the story being told mostly through the eyes of Jack Burden (John Ireland), a newspaperman who became a "true believer" in Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) when he was a poor but honest (and ultimately unsuccessful) County Treasurer candidate several years before running for Governor.

The terrible thing is that Willie Stark originally entered politics to do things for his constituency, but too soon found out that compromises had to be made in order to attain elective office. And once having made those compromises, he became more and more corrupt and ruthless, relying on his natural public appeal and a good line of populist BS to keep him in power.

But all this had a price. His "true believers" became repulsed and sickened by the decline in his morals and ethics, and by their own complicity in the deeds which had to be done to keep him in power.



It's a very powerful movie, and has a number of strong and memorable performances. Broderick Crawford won an Oscar and a Golden Globe as Best Leading Actor, and newcomer Mercedes McCambridge also won both as Best Supporting Actress. Robert Rossen won for best picture, and John Ireland was nominated for best Supporting Actor. There were many other nominations besides those listed above.

I recommend this movie very highly to all Noir fans!