2h 34min || July 1944
Director: Henry King
Stars: Alexander Knox, Charles Coburn, Geraldine Fitzgerald
Genres: Biography | Drama | History | Music | Romance
Watched online, very good print.
Although tagged with a Music genre, this has no Soundtracks page. The only musical performances are sing-alongs at home, or diegetic music of bands playing at political rallies/parades. There was a scene of Eddie Foy performing at the NY Palace theatre.
Apparently Wilson (president 1913-21) was a Southerner who supported Jim Crow laws. That was not touched in this film. In fact, he is shown revering Lincoln for freeing the slaves.
I found the onscreen convention overly long and pointless. Yes, it was quite amazing that it took 47 ballots to nominate the candidate (apparently no primaries back then?), but to show so many people and placards ... was this the first glimpse '44 audiences would have to nominating conventions? I grew up watching them on TV, back when they got the whole prime-time block+, and this seemed like it could have been a brief montage instead.
While it's interesting that Wilson lost his beloved wife and then successfully courted another all while in office, that seemed to take a lot of footage too.
I got more engaged when he finally felt compelled to enter WWI, which is more than halfway through the film. His role in the peace negotiation, and Wilson's fight for the League of Nations were ideas I might eventually want to study. I liked recognizing Marcel Dalio as the primary French negotiator; his makeup obscured his face completely, only his voice revealed him to me.
Certainly Germany is portrayed as evil back then, especially to reinforce the evil that they were perpetrating in WW2. This was clearly a propaganda film for then modern times.
I had read about this being a pet project of Zanuck. I'm glad to have seen it.
Fox, dir. King; 6
