24 Hours of American Political Movies

With tomorrow?s election ending two years and billions of dollars in presidential-campaign saturation, political junkies may find it hard to go cold turkey. So here we offer a daylong dose of cinematic methadone, 24 hours? worth of first-rate American political films that range from paranoid to irreverent to inspiring, crisscrossing genres that include screwball comedy, withering satire, metaphorical horror, incendiary documentary, and post-Watergate thriller. You will enter jaded and leave? well, more jaded?but hopefully entertained and edified, too.?

6 a.m.: Duck Soup (1933)?
Good morning! How about easing into the day with 68 of the funniest minutes ever committed to film? The extent to which the Marx Brothers intended Duck Soup?the last and best of their peak years at Paramount?as political satire is a matter of debate. After all, what?s the real difference between having Groucho play the leader of the small, made-up country of Freedonia and having him play the leader of the small, made-up college of Huxley in Horse Feathers the year before? Both are merely ripe settings for anarchic humor, some of it completely off-topic. Yet Groucho was politically outspoken, and there?s some bite to his performance as a whimsically deranged dictator who makes irrational decrees (among those listed in the classic song, ?Laws Of My Administration,? ?No one?s allowed to smoke or tell a dirty joke / And whistling is forbidden?) and takes his country to war over a slightest provocation. To war! To war! To war we?re gonna go!?

7:30 a.m.: The Great?McGinty (1940)
Preston Sturges kicked off one of the great directorial hot streaks?The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle Of Morgan?s Creek, and Sullivan?s Travels followed?with his debut feature, a withering satire about machine politics and the rotten soul of our democracy. The McGinty of the title, played by Brian Donlevy, first gets attention as a lowlife who collects $2 a pop for voting 37 times in the same mayoral election. That his initiative eventually leads to him holding that very same office?thanks to the power-brokering of the dirty, violent political ?boss? (Akim Tamiroff) who makes Donlevy his prot?g??says everything about the coal-black cynicism that underscores Sturges? comedy. It?s only when poor McGinty starts to take public service seriously that his downfall is heralded.?

9 a.m.: Election (1999)?
A tight student-council election that is decided by the powers-that-be throwing votes away? It sounds like a heavy-handed metaphor for the Bush v. Gore fiasco, only Alexander Payne?s jaundiced satire?based on Tom Perrotta?s novel?was released the year before. The Katherine Harris of this scenario is Matthew Broderick, a beloved high-school teacher in suburban Omaha who?s running the election, but opts to handpick a popular alternative (Chris Klein) to the monomaniacal frontrunner, a relentless and vindictive go-getter played by Reese Witherspoon. In his seething little microcosm of democracy, Payne spares none of the major players save for a third-party candidate (Jessica Campbell) who make a bold campaign promise: If elected, she?ll blow up the system altogether. Cue rapturous applause.?

11 a.m.: The Parallax View (1974)
After three comedies in a row, and particularly the comic mania of Election, the ?70s grimness of The Parallax View will take the energy down several notches, and replace it with shifty dread. As the Watergate scandal continued to unfold in the early ?70s, amid ongoing fears about Communism, Hollywood reacted with a handful of queasy conspiracy movies about dirty dealings in high places. The 1974 triad of Chinatown, The Conversation, and The Parallax View together represent some of the era?s bitterest responses to institutional corruption, but Parallax View in particular addresses the times? politics as a broken machine invisibly tended by irredeemably evil people. Warren Beatty stars as a dogged journalist who realizes there?s a larger story in a political assassination when the witnesses start dying?especially after a former girlfriend and fellow journalist who was present at the killing tips him off to the pattern, then dies herself. His hunt for truth progresses against increasingly disturbing odds, as he uncovers evidence of a ring of trained assassins who cover their tracks perfectly. Parallax View is notable for many things?its unrelenting cynicism, its shocking ending, its scathing conception of the era?s political tone?but it?s most memorable for a sequence where Beatty is subjected to a film meant to test his personality. The montage begins with warm, positive images of family, country, and religion, then gradually slides into a nightmarish montage of America?s racial atrocities, political assassinations, and wartime horrors. The juxtapositions associate sex with death, America with the Nazis, and the viewer with a comic-book image of Thor, a literal god on Earth. It?s exactly the kind of thing a sociopath should love and respond to, and Beatty?s presumed response sets up that shocking ending.

1 p.m.: Bananas (1971)
First off?and this has nothing to do with politics?it should be noted that the kazoo-laden score for Woody Allen?s goof on Central American tumult, by the late Marvin Hamlisch is joy distilled. It also sets the tone for Allen?s ironic, irreverent, and often supremely silly treatment of the revolutionary spirit that was gripping the region. As with the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, Allen allowed himself the freedom to score laughs wherever he could find them?a scene where he represents himself in court is a highlight?but he takes pointed shots at the media (Howard Cosell covers a political assassination like a sporting event) and the dubious commitment of poseurs like him (with a Fidel Castro fake moustache) who engage in causes primarily to impress girls.?

2:30 p.m.: A Face In The Crowd (1957)
Before Andy Griffith charmed a nation as the aw-shucks sheriff of America?s most idyllic small town on his classic eponymous sitcom, director Elia Kazan used the actor?s All-American magnetism to much darker effect in the classic 1957 political melodrama A Face In The Crowd. Griffith stars as an ornery, drunken itinerant troubadour who is plucked from obscurity by a canny operator (Patricia Neal) to sing on a local radio show. Griffith?s down-home appeal makes him a huge instant attraction and greases the way to a secondary career as a homespun advisor to a struggling presidential candidate. As Griffith scales the height of personal, professional, and political success, his ego balloons to monstrous dimensions. Under Griffith?s folksy facade lies a cynical, misanthropic, and calculating demagogue he can only hide for so long. Screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who memorably wrote about another incorrigible opportunist whose ambition proves his undoing in What Makes Sammy Run?, reportedly based Griffith?s character partly on real-life figures like humorist Will Rogers and television personality Arthur Godfrey, but today A Face In The Crowd stands as the most prescient of political satires. The film seemingly anticipates the inexorable rise of everyone from entertainer-turned-politician Ronald Reagan to blowhard demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O?Reilly.?

5 p.m.: Street Fight (2005)
Before his ascendency as the superhero mayor of Newark, near-legendary for personally digging out snowed-in residents and rescuing a woman from a house fire, Cory Booker battled the entrenched forces of incumbent mayor Sharpe James, who was determined at all costs to retain his seat. Marshall Curry?s riveting 2005 documentary, Street Fight, aligns itself with Booker in this David-vs.-Goliath match-up in the 2002 mayoral election, which Booker ultimately lost. (Booker was elected four years later when James decided not to run for a sixth term.) Among the dirty tactics used by the James campaign: sabotaging businesses that held events for Booker, destroying his street signs, and, perhaps most perniciously, implying that Booker was not black enough to represent the city. It?s nasty, bare-fisted politics, and Curry?s camera dives right into the scrum.?

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1926198/news/1926198/

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