Inherit the Wind(Stanley Kramer, 1960) I'm of a liberal frame of mind, which, if you take it as a true meaning, means that you are open to new ideas—even conservative ones. I know this may sound heretical to some and pollyannaish to others, but that's okay. It's my frame of mind, nobody has to picture it but me, though I may hang. But, there are some movies with a liberal bent that just chap my hide and this Stanley Kramer film of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's 1955 fictionalized play (adapted by Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith) about the Scopes Trial that centered on whether evolution could be taught in schools is one of them. I say "fictionalized" because it does not feature Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan (who argued on both sides in the 1925 Scopes Trial), but "Henry Drummond" (played in the film by Spencer Tracy) and "Matthew Harrison Brady" (played in the film by Fredric March) as court-opponents. Heck, John T. Scopes is named "Bertram Cates" (and played by, let's face it, the simian-looking Dick York) and "E.K. Hornbeck" (played by Gene Kelly) is a stand-in for H.L. Mencken.
Do a comparison of the trial's events and the play and you'll find so many deviations and fabrications and omissions (did you know that Bryan offered to play Scopes' fine if convicted?) that you begin to wonder if the game is rigged. It is, and the authors defended that by saying they weren't doing a dramatization of events (no, no, no, no!), but the play as a metaphor for McCarthyism and social "thought control." But, an audience might be convinced that what they're seeing is how things ...evolved.
First off, the Scopes Trial was a sham. The issue was The Butler Act, not evolution. A court can't decide on the validity of scientific theory, but can question the constitutionality of laws regarding free speech and public schools. The Butler Act said, in part: "That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." Joseph W. Butler was a Tennessee State Rep and a member of the World Christian Fundamentals Association who'd heard that (no doubt "from a lotta people") that kids were coming home from school telling their parents that the Bible was bunk.
The ACLU wanted a test case. Scopes, a substitute science and math teacher agreed to be the defendant when asked by Dayton business leaders—prominently George Rappleyea—to test the law, believing it would bring a lot of publicity to Dayton. Remember that. Butler's Law had one big thorn in it. Tennessee public school teachers were required to use a textbook, Hunter's "Civil Biology", which had a chapter on evolution. In other words, if a science/biology teacher did their job using that required text, they'd be violating the Butler Act. Rock meet Hard Place. But, Scopes—after some initial reluctance agreed saying "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."
Scopes couldn't remember if he'd actually taught evolution, but coached students to say he did in order for an indictment to be made. When the gran jury recommended trial, the prosecutors—who were friends of Scopes'—reached out to Bryan—who had been very vocal in his support of the Butler Act to join their team. Bryan, never the shyest of men, agreed, although credit for the request went to the head of the WCFA. The defense reached out to Darrow, who initially refused so as to keep the whole thing from becoming a circus, but as it was becoming one, anyway, accepted.
"The trial," (such as it was) was broadcast on radio, with witnesses for evolutionary theory blocked, prejudicial instructions from the judge and a completely unnecessary debate between Bryan and Darrow on the last day because Bryan, believing he'd been one-upped by the defense's arguments regarding the Bible (the jury did not hear them because the judge excused them from that part of the defense's case, pending dismissing that part of the testimony) wanted the last word. The thing was, he was being questioned by Darrow and that last, seventh day of the trial (held outdoors because of the stifling heat) devolved into arguments and was finally gavelled finished by the judge.
Ultimately, the jury found Scopes guilty, he was charged a $100 fine by the judge and the verdict was overturned on appeal by a technicality. That technicality being inherent in the Butler Act, itself: the judge fined Scopes $100 as per the tenets of the Butler Act, but Tennessee judges under the state constitution could not charge fines more than $50, only juries could. And that was the end of the Scopes Trial. The Butler Act was repealed in 1967.
Inherit the Wind would have you believe that the judge only fined Scopes $100 out of political expediency and because he didn't want to give the town any publicity. But, publicity is what the whole trial was about and its purpose for being. And the film also makes its Darrow stand-in so warm-and-fuzzy and tolerant about the Bible that it runs afoul of Darrow's attitude throughout the trial. The movie's theme is "(Gimme That) Old Time Religion," but it should have been "Kumbaya." Inherit the Wind is a plea for tolerance merely, but to see it as anything more runs afoul of everything about the actual incidents as they took place in 1925, incidents that were staged and manipulated for maximum exposure and cotton candy sales, as real and as truthful as a television reality show. To further compound it by fictionalizing it is to lend it a credence that it never had and a relevancy that it never achieved...for either side.
But, then, I've always liked Stanley Kubrick's "take" on the idea, as expressed in 2001: a Space Odyssey (about to hit its fifty-second anniversary next month), which took the question of "were we created by a god, or, did we evolve, naturally, over time as the fittest survivors?" and came up with the answer "in a Universe of possibilities, why can't it be a little bit of both?"
"Irving is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda. A man who is convinced that Britain's great decline was accelerated by its decision to go to war with Germany, he is most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to confirm his conclusions. A review of his recent book, Churchill's War, which appeared in New York Review of Books, accurately analyzed his practice of applying a double standard of evidence. He demands "absolute documentary proof" when it comes to proving the Germans guilty, but he relies on highly circumstantial evidence to condemn the Allies. This is an accurate description not only of Irving's tactics, but of those of deniers in general."
Sounds like every political argument I've had...well, ever. And it's become a cottage industry for the "don't confuse me with facts" crowd. "It can't be true because I don't believe it." People have an opinion and go looking for facts to support it, rather than looking at facts and drawing a conclusion about it. The latter is what intelligent people do, and that's just too inconvenient for those living in their bubble-verse to deal with. God knows, it would prevent the important work of being a "Sandy Hook denier" or a"Pizzagate" vigilante.
Irving took umbrage at this quotation I cited, appearing at one of Lipstadt's lectures—this one at deKalb College in Atlanta—(it wasn't exactly spontaneous as 1) he lives in England and 2) he brought along videographers), interrupting it and her, and challenging her to produce one shred of evidence that Hitler had authorized the extermination of the Jews in what would be called "The Final Solution." He waved $1,000 in the air, saying he'd give it to anyone who could produce that evidence. Of course, no one did because you usually don't carry documents like that into a lecture hall—just like no one brings heads of lettuce or rotten tomatoes, despite what the movies tell us.
Irving then brought suit in England, conveniently, not only for location but also strategically: in the Jolly Olde, the burden of proof isn't on the one who brings suit, it is on the ones they're complaining about. Rather than Irving having to prove his contention that he was libeled and suffered for it, it was up to Lipstadt to prove that what she wrote in the book could be proven as fact. Only then, could she win the libel suit. Given the stakes, and that she'd be the one with the most work to do, hired the legal firm run by Anthony Julius (played by Andrew Scott), who had famously represented Lady Diana in her divorce from Prince Charles and the Royal Family. Under the impression that there was nobody else who knew his material as well as he did, Irving chose to represent himself. And in so doing, he could use the court as a forum for his views on history. Tom Wilkinson plays Richard Rampton, who argued for Lipstade in court.
Trouble was, Irving was going to have to be confronted with "facts" in court. And it came down to his representation of what "facts" meant. He made much of an internal Nazi memo saying that Hitler wanted to put "The Final Solution" on "the back-burner" until after the Nazi's had won WWII, and a contention that the gas-chambers at Auschwitz were more to solve a delousing problem than as a killing device, based on something he read that contended that more Jews might have died of disease at Auschwitz than by outright murder. He chose to show as evidence of this that there were no holes in the gas-chambers through which the Nazi's could throw the pellets of Zyclon-B in order to carry out the killing, made conveniently tough by the Nazi's blowing up the chambers in 1944 to cover up the horrific crimes. Photographic evidence during the war had clearly shown them, but the usual trope of "faked photographs" was used to discount this. People believe what they want to believe, no matter the facts.
The trial was tough for Lipstadt, too. She very much wanted to expand the scope of the trial to condemn all Holocaust deniers, but was urged to keep silent and let the results of the trial speak for themselves. She very famously made no comment when the court found in her favor and against Irving. As screen-writer David Hare (author of Plenty, and the film adaptations of The Hours and The Reader) makes it clear the "denial" of the title is not only of the Holocaust, but also her own instincts to insert herself into the machinations of the trial.
Hare's screenplay is scrupulously attached to the facts. One should expect nothing less, given the subject of veracity embedded in the trial, but also (one suspects) to avoid any further litigation. If anything, the broadest thing one can accuse it of is casting Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt and Scott as Julius...and, for that matter, Timothy Spall as Irving. That may be the one concession to drama that Denial allows, and, to tell the truth, I found it refreshing, even if it may not have added to the "weekend box office" among the movie-going public. I not only found it refreshing, I found it as something of a salve for a sensibility that had been pummeled by a steady diet of lies, damn lies, and discounted statistics over the last few months and will probably not abate until it's been proven, to the point even the lowest politician could agree to, that it just doesn't "work" any more. In which case, you'll never see another commercial again.
That'll be the day. Lincoln said "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." He might have been optimistic. But, then, he might have been alive long enough to have heard P.T. Barnum say "There's a sucker born ever minute." These days, truth is slippery. And, if you don't believe that, look it up in Wikipedia. Or Facebook. Or anything on the internet—including this movie review site. Truth will out, they say, but only if there is someone who is willing to receive it. These days, lies are spread by far too many willing accomplices. And they should be ashamed, if their arrogance allowed such a concept of "shame" to exist.
Denial reminded me of one of the most moving moments I ever saw in film, coupled with one of the most passionate speeches about humanity—in Jacob Bronowski's encyclopedic "The Ascent of Man." In the eleventh episode, "Knowledge or Certainty," (which I've included in its entirety at the bottom of the page), Bronowski, in a seamless thread, explores perception, the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg and the dangers of thinking something as absolute, even down to the microscopic level. He then goes on to talk about his friend Leo Szilard, one of the theoreticians behind the atomic bomb, of the migration of physicists from Germany during the war, and finally, ends it with this indelible moment...
This hit me like a hammer when I first saw it in 1978. And today, it is more pertinent than ever. Knowledge is ridiculed, statistics are ignored, and no one seems capable of facing facts if their opinion is in the way. It's what happens when intelligence is replaced by the very arrogance that Bronowski talks about. I see this happen all the time, and these days, it hits with a particularly resonant clang. If only there was someone to hear it...and then acknowledge it. The director of that particular episode of "The Ascent of Man" is also the director of Denial—Mick Jackson.
And, oh, by the way. It's not verifiable that P.T. Barnum ever said "There's a sucker born every minute." It's also not verifiable that Lincoln said "...you can't fool all the people all the time." If only the sentiments were not verifiable by so much bloody evidence.
When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.
When the Founding Fathers decreed that "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence, released 239 years ago, they weren't speaking of civil rights. They were actually refuting the divine right of Kings—that just because you're born in the house of Tudor, Stuart, Plantagenet or Windsor does not give the inherent or even god-given right to rule over other people, whatever their circumstances. That's what the slave-owners who wrote the Declaration meant. But, because that document and the Constitution deal with fundamental ideals of human rights—base-line ideals—on which this country and its governance are formed, they have become "living, breathing documents," and are just as subject to evolution as the species that came up with them, and cannot, in good conscience, remain inert without undergoing re-interpretation, as this country has seen in the last couple weeks. Things change and our laws and our practicing of them, must change, if they are to remain true to the spirit with which this Nation announced itself. The United States of America, that most hopeful of country names, is an experiment in whether a people can put aside their differences, their tribalism and their prejudices and govern themselves, not relying on some potentate given that position by birth. It's an experiment that hasn't been perfected yet—and given those mentioned factors of human beings—may never be perfect to everyone's liking. There are only two ways we, as a people, can only be truly equal—by either putting aside our prejudices and practicing what we preach or by dying. Evolution or extinction will make us all equal. Those are the only choices. But, progress, like evolution, slowly, inexorably gets changed. If anything has defined the history of the United States, it is the story of the African-American, brought over in slave-ships to be propertied labor, no better than cattle, and the Nation's waking up from its privileged slumber to realize that it was deluding itself to say "all men are created equal" in theory while violating it in the worst way in practice. That struggle is the struggle of the United States—to back up its high-minded words with action in everyday life.
Sergeant Rutledge(John Ford, 1960) "Mr. Lincoln said we're free. But that just ain't so." So says Sergeant Braxton Rutledge (Woody Strode) in another in a series of lesser known films by master director John Ford. This is another—his last, in fact*—look at the U.S. Cavalry, but fills in one of the "gaps" in the "Western" era of the United States, post-Civil War—the era of the Buffalo Soldier, when men who were former slaves were allowed to join the Armed Forces in service to the country that had previously condoned, by inaction, their forced servitude. Sergeant Rutledge (the film) is John Ford's acknowledgment of that conundrum and the hypocritical attitude of the Nation towards the rights of slaves. It is one thing to free them. It is quite another to not keep them enslaved by treating them as second-tier citizens, not equal to the whites under the law. Ford always populated his films of American history with a varied populace—Swedes, Irish, Poles, Germans, Caucasians, mostly, but the occasional Latino, as well—but his films are remarkably free of immigrants of color. It was prescient of him to do Rutledge on the cusp of the Civil Rights era, and before Sidney Poitier broke the box-office color barrier.
Based on the novel "Captain Buffalo" (a title that Ford clearly preferred but was overruled when the studio proved to be white-knuckled about it) by author James Warner Bellah (who wrote the stories for Ford's "Cavalry trilogy" and the subsequent screenplay for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it tackles the service of the Buffalo Soldiers, who, even while defending the Nation, were not equal under the law and not equal in the hearts and minds of the civilian populace they served. Sergeant Rutledge was far afield of the mainstream in its purpose of pointing out and condemning official and social prejudice. John Huston had tackled the same issue in a sub-plot of In This Our Life in 1946, when the word of a black man could not hold the weight against that of a prominent (or even a non-prominent) white in a court of law (And Rutledge appeared before a similarly themed book To Kill a Mockingbird was presented as film in 1961). White truth counts more than black truth. In fact, a white lie counts more than a black truth. The same applies in Sergeant Rutledge: Mr. Lincoln said they're free. But it just ain't so. Not as long as the color of one's skin is a consideration for justice...for anything... no matter the official platitudes saying otherwise.
"They're laying it on a little thick for Sergeant Rutledge", says Lt. Tom Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter, top-billed, although he has less screen-time than Strode, no doubt due to Warners' fears of effect on box-office revenues) and it applies to the tactics inside the film and that of the director. Ford toys with our prejudices in this one, pushing emotional buttons, challenging our own best intentions as an audience against established prejudices, which he pokes and prods, in images that provoke. Against that, he puts forth acts of character that should weigh more than the impressions those images inspire. Those images are informed (or mis-informed) by the testimony of the witnesses in a military court-martial and trial of the title character, and "character" is the chief concern of each attestant, for good or ill. Because of the differing impressions and opinions that are presented as fact, Sergeant Rutledge is Ford's version of Rasho-mon, a tip of the stetson to Japan's director Akira Kurosawa who had been, in turn, evoking Ford throughout his career.
Black man's hand against a white woman's face: images that provoke.
It all revolves around what Rutledge calls "white woman trouble:"A girl (Toby Michaels) is found raped and murdered, and her father (who just happens to be in charge of the 9th Cavalry) is also found slain. Disapproving locals have seen Rutledge helping the headstrong Lucy Dabney—and their prejudices are as much against her as Rutledge—and when she ends up dead, accusing eyes immediately turn to him. Her father ends up dead, and Rutledge is nowhere to be found, deserted. His own 9th Cavalry is sent out to track him down, headed by Lt. Cantrell, who has come out to meet his love Mary Beecher (Constance Towers, so excellent in Ford's The Horse Soldiers from the previous year). Once caught, Rutledge proves too capable to hold on to and escapes. But, when the 9th is under peril from an ambush, he returns to warn them, his sense of duty overriding his surety that he would be incapable of facing a fair trial from the white military commanders sitting in judgement, or the townspeople who'd as soon lynch him as try him.
Lucy Dabney is found murdered—it is only the image that implies she's been violated.
Cantrell, based on Rutledge's actions warning the troop, agrees to serve as defense attorney at his court-martial, but its an uphill struggle. The prosecutor (Carleton Young) bases his case on circumstantial evidence, as well as playing on the prejudices of the court and the spectators (which are not far afield from his own). Rutledge knows he will be damned, but stands trial anyway, lest the accusations besmirch the rest of the 9th. Like in previous Ford Cavalry pictures, the Corps is greater than any one man, or even the truth. The Corps must be preserved, whatever the cost.
The symbolism doesn't get more obvious than this: The lily-white gloved hand of the prosecutor accuses Rutledge.
It's in the trial portion where Ford becomes his most expressive directing, using lighting and stage techniques to move us from the courtroom testimony to the flashbacks of the events of the witnesses' narratives. Naturalism, which has been prevalent from the beginning of the film, transitions as we move from present into the past of memory and perspective, splintering reality and truth, as the case for and against Rutledge is built. At the same time, Ford uses comedy to show the absurdity and irony of the court's officials charged with the heavy burden of judging a man's life, being far less. Those moments of farce (which disarm any protests of stereotyping as the whites get the brunt of it), especially in the form of Col. Otis Fosgate (Willis Bouchey, in a role that might have been played by Ward Bond, if he had chosen to participate) and his bickering with his harridan of a wife (played by Billie Burke), might seem out of a place if Ford 1) didn't want to break up the drama a bit—as was his wont, and 2) showing the foolishness of the officials raises the stakes (conversely) of the drama by making them less resolute and dependable as authority figures.
One of the great joys for me of Sergeant Rutledge is to see the lengthy performance of one of my favorite character actors, Woodrow Wilson Woolbine Strode, who was usually "tasked" with playing dialogue-less African princes and warriors (he would even play one for Stanley Kubrick this same year in Spartacus) who had a distinctive face that photographed well from any angle.
Strode's acting is varied in quality, stiff and a little too brittle on occasion, but in his break-down scene on the witness stand with Ford's camera bearing down on him, he cracks and suddenly you see an amazing performance, right from the umbraged tilt of Strode's head at the prosecution's veiled bigotry, to the crumbling of that stoic face as he must finally reveal himself, rather than keeping his counsel and expressing himself by example. Strode was always a better physical actor (the way Redford is, the way John Wayne is) and some of his most memorable performances (like in Spartacus the same year and Once Upon a Time in the West) he has no lines at all. And Ford, who got more out of actors with looks and gestures than from reams of dialogue, trusted the planes of the face to reveal thoughts and feelings that might move, and even terrify, an audience.
Folks dismiss Rutledge as one of Ford's "atonement" movies, never questioning why other directors didn't do something similar, nor considering why it was important for Ford to continue to tell the history of the States by filling in some of the less known gaps in "the taming of the West" (especially considering that television at the time was glutted with more typically conventional Western fare) or that market forces might not demand his reassessment of the Western saga. Certainly, the timing for Sergeant Rutledge to garner more attention might have been more appropriate for the later 60's, as opposed to when Ford made it...in 1960. I think Rutledge is brave, stirring, and damning, not just for its time but for ours, as well. We haven't yet reached the point where (as one sage put it) people can be judged by the content of the character and not by the color of their skin." "Mr. Lincoln said we're free. But it just ain't so." And the line continues: "Maybe some day. But not yet." And still not yet, past the time-setting of the film, or the day it was made. Some day we'll live up to our birthright: "all men are created equal." It's why we keep fighting...in the streets and in our hearts. Until we've beat ourselves color-blind.
Woody Strode, along with Jack Robinson, and Ken Washington when they played for UCLA
* Well, he did do some Cavalry coverage inCheyenne Autumn (which we'll take a look at soon), but the true focus of that film is The Trail of Tears from the First People's point-of-view.
** The publicity department at Warner Bros had to fight two battle to reach an audience: 1) the director was considered an "old codger" who, although he was the only director who'd won three Oscars, was thought a little "out of touch" for young audiences; 2) the story was about a black man in a time before the Civil Rights marches of the '60's. So, the question is this: how do you be ahead of your time for modern audiences but still be an "old codger" in the eyes of the studio? Makes no sense. Now, look at the posters for Rutledge from the Warner publicity department that downplay the story and Strode in favor of a more prominently positioned white. And Ford stalwarts John Wayne and Ward Bond chose not to participate in the film, except to lend their names to generically complimentary praise-plugs.
.jpg)
.jpg)
