Al Weisel - CDNow's 10 Essential American Political Films
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| The 10 Essential American Political Films
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 | By
Al Weisel
CDNOW Senior Editor, Movies
Ever since President Woodrow Wilson called D.W. Griffith's
racist justification of segregation, Birth
of a Nation, "History writ with lightning," filmmakers
have recognized the awesome power of film to make persuasive
political arguments. From Battleship
Potemkin to The
Green Berets movies have been a tool for propaganda.
But even such entertainments as the James Bond series promote
a particular world view.
The films on this list, however, are narrower in scope.
Each deals specifically with the American political system as
its subject. Although these films span many decades, it's
interesting how similar their view of that system is. Although
recently it seems Americans have the same complaints about
politics -- the candidates are terrible, money corrupts the
system -- these feelings are hardly new. If the films on this
list are any indication, Americans have been cynical about
politics for a long time.
After all, the founding fathers were also suspicious of
politicians, which is why they set up a government with checks
and balances. Most celluloid politicians are depicted at best
as shallow and ineffectual (the blow-dried naïf played by
Robert Redford in The
Candidate), at worst, duplicitous and venal (the
right-wing, folk-singing protagonist of Tim Robbins' Bob
Roberts or Reese Witherspoon's scheming high school
politico in Election)
or simply great but flawed (the Bill Clinton stand-in in Primary
Colors). Maybe politicians should start their own
anti-defamation league.
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| 1. The Manchurian Candidate
(1962) |
 This political thriller directed by John Frankenheimer
depicts both Communists and McCarthyites as scheming villains.
Laurence Harvey plays a former POW brainwashed by North
Koreans to assassinate a rabidly anti-communist politician
(James Gregory) who happens to be the husband of his scheming,
manipulative mother (Angela Lansbury). Only Frank Sinatra can
stop him in this film that eerily foreshadowed the Kennedy
assassination a year later.
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| 2. All The President's Men
(1976) |
 From an era when journalists ferreted out real
corruption instead of spending their time trying to find out
who politicians are sleeping with, this film seems almost
quaint now. All the President's Men dramatizes the true
story of how Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward
(Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) blew the
lid off the Watergate break-in and caused the downfall of
President Richard Nixon. Told with precision and detail by
director Alan J. Pakula, this story ripped from the headlines
is a riveting political thriller even though you know what
happens at the end.
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| 3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939) |
 It
may be true that this film is as naïve as its Boy-Scout
protagonist Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart), who is elected
senator by a shady cabal that thinks it can manipulate him.
But despite the fairy tale ending, its message about how
powerful lobbyists and special interests manipulate the system
is just as relevant today. Director Frank Capra also explored
similar themes in his powerful film State
of the Union, starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine
Hepburn.
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| 4. Bulworth (1998) |
 Warren Beatty wrote, directed, and stars in this
brave, iconoclastic film that deals with such hot-button
issues as racism and corrupt current campaign-finance laws.
Beatty plays an idealistic senator who has become
disillusioned and pays a hitman to kill him. Once he feels
free to express what's really on his mind about race and
politics he becomes incredibly popular and is not so eager to
die anymore. Can he find the hitman in time and stop him from
carrying out the job? The scene where Beatty gives an
outrageous television interview -- in hip-hop rhymes -- is as
funny as it is insightful.
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| 5. The Great McGinty (1940) |
 Director Preston Sturges' satiric tale of Dan McGinty
(Brian Donlevy), a hobo who rises to become governor with the
help of a corrupt political machine, was his first directorial
effort. Once at the top, McGinty makes a fatal mistake -- he
decides to go honest. Narrated by McGinty in a flashback, it's
a brutally funny and sobering look at how easily democracy was
hijacked by political machines until they were replaced with
"soft" money and lobbyists.
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| 6. The Best Man (1964) |
 Gore Vidal wrote the screenplay based on his play for
this biting look at men vying for the Presidential nomination
of their party at a deadlocked convention. The two
front-runners, William Russell (Henry Fonda), an intellectual
liberal based on Adlai Stevenson, and Joe Cantwell (Cliff
Robertson), who was inspired by Richard Nixon, vie for the
endorsement of the President that will clinch their
nomination. Each must decide how dirty he will get to secure
it. Ronald Reagan was originally proposed to play Russell
onstage, but Vidal nixed him because he didn't look
"presidential."
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| 7. Advise and Consent
(1962) |
 The battle over the nomination of a secretary of state
is the subject of this Otto Preminger film, which like many of
his films pushed the limits of censorship with its
controversial subject. Senator Brigham Anderson (Don Murray)
tries to derail the nomination of Robert Leffingwell (Henry
Fonda) when he learns of the liberal Leffingwell's ties to
Communist organization when he was younger, but then is faced
with revelations from his own past. In light of more recent
battles over the Clarence Thomas nomination and the "don't
ask, don't tell" policy, this film is more relevant than
ever.
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| 8. All the King's Men
(1949) |
 Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert
Penn Warren inspired by the life of Louisiana Governor Huey
Long, this film won an Oscar for Best Picture. Broderick
Crawford stars as Willie Starks, a populist backwoods
politician who becomes just as corrupt as the people he fought
against as he worked his way up to the top. Told through the
eyes of a disillusioned aide (John Ireland) who observes his
transformation into a dishonest demagogue, the film also won
Oscars for Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, who plays
Starks' campaign manager.
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| 9. The Last Hurrah (1958) |
 Spencer Tracy stars in John Ford's elegiac look at an
aging Irish political boss running his last campaign for
mayor. Based on Edwin O'Connor's novel inspired by the career
of Boston mayor James Curley, this film looks at both the
virtues and vices of old-time machine politics, which both
uplifted and exploited ethnic populations in the big cities,
and how they gave been replaced by the equally problematic
image-manufactured politics ushered in by
television.
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| 10. Wag the Dog (1997) |
 This hilarious satire directed by Barry Levinson was
so wildly plausible that its title immediately entered the
lexicon when some speculated that life had imitated art. In
order to deflect attention from a sex scandal a President
creates a fake war with the help of a Hollywood producer
(Dustin Hoffman, doing a dead-on impression of Robert Evans).
Originally written as a criticism of Pentagon manipulation of
the press during the Persian Gulf War, when it was released in
the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent
bombing of Iraq, the parallels seemed uncanny.
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