I decided to watch the opening of this tonight, thinking I would halt it to go to bed early. I couldn't. It was so well made - until the last five minutes - that I could not stop watching it.
Everything is done well. The script. The acting. The direction that holds our attention once the story gets going without letting up. (Yes, the first part of the movie, before we meet Willie Stark, could have been shortened. The narrator, Jack Burden, a reporter, is never really of any interest himself, so his problems never held me. He reminded me of the narrator in The Great Gatsby.)
The last few minutes, the death scenes, seemed cliched and unworthy of the great writing that had come before.
Now, of course, in the era of Trump, it's hard not to see Stark as a populist predecessor.
I strongly recommend this movie, There are shades of Citizen Kane and Keeper of the Flame, certainly, but this movie stands on its own as a great motion picture, produced by Hollywood moguls, most of them Jewish refugees, who were intent on warning American audiences that what they had fled in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere could happen here as well.
As indeed it can.
Everything is done well. The script. The acting. The direction that holds our attention once the story gets going without letting up. (Yes, the first part of the movie, before we meet Willie Stark, could have been shortened. The narrator, Jack Burden, a reporter, is never really of any interest himself, so his problems never held me. He reminded me of the narrator in The Great Gatsby.)
The last few minutes, the death scenes, seemed cliched and unworthy of the great writing that had come before.
Now, of course, in the era of Trump, it's hard not to see Stark as a populist predecessor.
I strongly recommend this movie, There are shades of Citizen Kane and Keeper of the Flame, certainly, but this movie stands on its own as a great motion picture, produced by Hollywood moguls, most of them Jewish refugees, who were intent on warning American audiences that what they had fled in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere could happen here as well.
As indeed it can.