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Spencer Tracy runs for office in John Ford's toothless satire The Last Hurrah |
Director: John Ford
Cast: Spencer Tracy (Major Frank Skeffington), Jeffrey
Hunter (Adam Caulfield), Dianne Foster (Maeve Caulfield), Pat O’Brien (John
Gorman), Basil Rathbone (Norman Cass), Donald Crisp (Cardinal Martin Burke), James
Gleason (“Cuke” Gillen), Edward Brophy (“Ditto” Boland), John Carradine (Amos
Force), Willis Bouchey (Roger Sugrue), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Weinberg), Wallace
Ford (Charles J Hennessey), Basil Ruysdael (Bishop Gardner)
Mayor Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) is running for a
fifth term of a “New England city”. Skeffington’s roots lie in the town
sprawling Irish population, and has successfully played the game of machine
politics all his life. He’s alienated the members of the towns traditional
elite – who can trace their ancestors all the way back to the Mayflower – but he’s loved by the
regular people of the city. But is Skeffington going to find himself out of
touch with a political world starting to embrace populism and the power of television.
John Ford’s adaptation of a hit novel by Edwin O’Connor, is
one of his rare “present day” pictures. But it’s a bit of a busted flush. What
should have been an exploration of a tipping point in American politics,
totally fails to successfully land any of the points it could make. It’s a film
that doesn’t understand the Kennedy-esque world America was moments away from
embracing, and looks with such ridiculously excessive sentimentality at old-school
politics it manages to tell us nothing about the corruption and dirty deals of
this sort of machine politics. Effectively it’s a film that takes two long
hours to tell us almost nothing at all.
The film adores two things – and it’s not a surprise in a
Ford film – the past and the Irish. Anything from yesteryear is covered in a
halo, with the parade of old-school Hollywood character actors from the Ford
rep company taking it in turns to denounce and condemn anything and anyone less
than 40 years old. Every young person in the film is either a feckless idiot –
Skeffington and Cass’ sons are a playboy and an embarrassing moron – or, like Jeffrey
Hunter’s Adam Caulfield (Skeffington’s nephew covering the election for the
local paper) is there merely to provide doe-eyed adoration.
As for the Irish, the film loves the grace and charm of this
old immigrant community. Skeffington’s Irish political machine is sanitised
beyond belief. In the real world these sort of organisations operated on a
system of back room deals, intimidation and careful arrangements to deliver set
quotas of votes on polling day. Sure many of these politicians also delivered a
number of social reforms – as Skeffington does – but any suggestion that any of
Skeffington’s dealings could ever be described as dirty are roundly dismissed.
Here it’s all about what Skeffington could do for other people, and no mention
of the endemic corruption in many politicians like this. Instead Skeffington is presented with nothing but rose-tinted sentimentalism, a respectful widower, a kind man, whose actions are often more about other people than politics.
Former Boston mayor James Michael Curley – who Skeffington
was clearly based on – was imprisoned for corruption. No chance of that
happening to Skeffington who only uses intimidation and back-street savvy to
fight the causes of orphans and widows (literally) and takes nothing at all
from the public purse (although he still lives in a lovely big home). By
contrast his elite opponents are the sort of scowling, greedy, penny-counters you
might find in a Frank Capra film, shameless bankers and newspaper types who
care nothing for truth and justice and only their own selfish needs.
Perhaps that’s why Skeffington’s opponent McCluskey (an
early Kennedy substitute with his perfect family life, war record and lack of
actual accomplishments) is portrayed as such an empty suit, a mindless,
grinning yes-man who has nothing to say and no goals to meet. Ford’s contempt
for him – and for the new word of television – drips off the screen. The TV
shot we see McCluskey shooting is a farcical mess, poorly shot, edited and
delivered with stilted artificiality by McCluskey and his tongue-tied wife. Not
only is it not particularly funny, the presentation of this just shows how out
of touch Ford was with modern America. Two years after this, Kennedy would win
an election largely off the back of his ability to present a dynamic image on
TV. Skeffington even crumbles in the election due to his traditional,
press-the-flesh campaign not competing effectively with TV slots. How can that
look even remotely convincing when Ford shows his rival has no mastery of the
new media at all? That in fact he’s worse at making TV than Skeffington proves
to be?
What exactly was Ford going for? By failing to criticise
anything at all about the old-school politics and pouring loathing on the new
politics, he ends up saying very little at all. Skeffington is a twinkly angel,
but we never understand why so many in the church and the city oppose him –
other than the fact I guess that he is Irish. Donald Crisp’s cardinal promises
at one point near the end to reveal why he always opposed Skeffington – only to
be hushed. If anything bad ever happened, Ford ain’t telling us making this one
of the most dishonest of his tributes to Old America.
None of this is to criticise much of the acting, which is
great. Spencer Tracy dominates the film with his accustomed skill and charisma,
his Skeffington both a twinkly charmer and a practised flesh-presser who
manages to subtly pitch and adjust his character depending on his audience and
whose physicality helps to assert his dominance in every scene. Pat O’Brien
does fine work as his fixer and Basil Rathbone is suitably sinister as a his
principle financial opponent. Ford also puts together some memorable shots –
especially a long walk Skeffington takes past a victory parade – and scenes,
but the film is an empty mess. And, with its extended final twenty minute coda,
goes on way too long.
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