All the King's Men (1949)

All the King's Men (1949)

starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland

written and directed by Robert Rossen

110 minutes

Reporter Jack Burden (John Ireland) takes an interest in Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), a wanna be small town lawyer, after writing a few stories about Stark who is running for county treasurer. Stark loses that election, and the next one when he aims higher and runs for governor.

Jack quits his job after the newspaper bends to pressure and stops backing Stark. Jack takes a job working for Stark and is part of the team when Stark wins the governorship four years later.

Stark takes advantage of the power he has amassed to control things within the state. He counts heavily on a populist movement with the state made up entirely of poor, White people. Willie tests Jack's loyalty when he starts seeing Anne Stanton, the niece of Attorney General Monte Stanton woman who was also once Jack's fiancée.

Stark eventually pushes things too far and gets impeached by the state legislature. Stark, fearing that he will be found guilty, puts pressure on Jack to dig up dirt on Monte Stanton. Jack finds incriminating evidence but withholds it from Willie for fear of what he will do with it.

Thoughts

There is more to this movie than what I described above. There are at least a couple other plot threads that I didn't mention. They help to color in some bits of the story but don't seem essential to an abbreviated description of the movie.

This movie was nominated for seven and won three Academy Awards. It won for Best Motion Picture. Broderick Crawford won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Mercedes McCambridge won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Robert Rossen was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Director, Best Writing Screenplay) but didn't win either award. John Ireland was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but did not win. The movie was also nominated Best Film Editing.

Both Crawford and McCambridge were excellent in their roles. The rest of the cast is good but those two really stand out. Ireland does a decent job but did not wow me with his performance.

This was a very interesting movie. I can't help but see some parallels to events of the past few years.