So harsh were the reviews of the new film version of All the King’s Men, that I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed the picture when I saw it Friday night.
I wonder what the critics expected. Robert Penn Warren’s vast, sprawling novel, with its intricate subplots, lush descriptive passages and heavy threads of sin, guilt and redemption can never be fully realized in any film. The classic 1949 version, with Broderick Crawford, garnered seven Academy Award nominations and won three, but it barely scratched the surface of the book.
The latest version by Steven Zaillian, starring Sean Penn, sticks reasonably close to the novel, and is both well-acted and hauntingly photographed. Maybe I’m too easily pleased, but for me, that was enough. I don’t expect miracles from Hollywood.
What did irritate me about the film was its tortured effort to be both faithful to the novel and politically correct at the same time.
The novel was inspired by the twisted career of Huey “Kingfish” Long, the ruthless and flamboyant Louisiana politician who was assassinated in 1935. To what extent the novel is a fictionalized biography of Long is a matter of debate.
Author Robert Penn Warren taught English at Louisiana State University during Long’s governorship. But he insisted vehemently that he did not write a roman a clef. In particular, he pointed out that he did not begin writing the play that ultimately became the novel until 1939 -- by which time he was on sabbatical in Rome, living under Mussolini’s fascists while reading Machiavelli and Dante. Enough raw material there, surely, for Warren to write a novel about a power-mad politician, even if he had never set foot in Louisiana.
The movie is similarly muddled on the question of whether Willie Stark is Huey Long. Sean Penn said that he studied old newsreels of Long’s speeches to create the character of Willie Stark. The homework shows in his performance. Anyone who has seen those newsreels will immediately recognize Long’s flailing arms and other mannerisms.
There is also a scene in the film that shows Penn recording the song, “Every Man a King” – which Long co-wrote with the band director of Louisiana State University and personally recorded. And there are scenes of Penn haranguing the crowds from the steps of Louisiana’s art deco state capitol, which was built by Long.
But to judge from the style of the autos and the other period details, the action of the film appears to take place in 1940s, instead of a decade earlier. A newspaper headline flashed on the screen at the end of the picture has Governor Stark assassinated in 1954, not 1935.
Is Willie Stark not Huey Long after all, or is there some other reason for setting the film in the 1940s – after the country had pulled itself out of the Depression that did so much to propel Long to power?
My guess is that the later time period was selected in order to show African-American faces in the crowd scenes. The same bow to political correctness might also account for Governor Stark being assassinated the same year that the Supreme Court ended the segregation of public schools.
But Huey Long was scarcely harbinger of the civil rights movement. He willingly pandered to the racism of his redneck constituency. At a time of rigid racial segregation, he was not above smearing a political opponent by insinuating that his family had Negro blood. As a U.S. senator, he voted against a federal anti-lynching law.
Political consultant James Carville was the film’s executive producer. Perhaps the man who helped elect Bill Clinton could explain these contradictions.
