All the King's Men

Willie Stark, an honest law graduate in a small Southern town, enters politics by standing against local corruption. The people love him. Once elected governor he starts using the same methods himself: pressure, blackmail, purchase. Jack Burden, the journalist covering him, becomes an accomplice step by step. The film is not interested in political corruption. It is interested in the follower deceiving himself: while showing Stark's change it is really about how those around him justify it. Because the narrator is the journalist, the audience stays inside that deception too. The form is realist: scenes shot in real towns, crowded rally footage and a newsreel texture. Robert Rossen used amateur performers in some passages. The source is Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning novel, and behind the character stands the story of the Louisiana governor Huey Long. The film won Best Picture at the 1950 Academy Awards; Broderick Crawford won Best Actor and Mercedes McCambridge won Best Supporting Actress in her first film. Who it is for: viewers who like American political drama and the harder work of classical Hollywood. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. Several subplots open in the second half and the novel's scope does not quite fit the film.