HISTORY ON THE FILMS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 239, 21 January 1944, Page 17

HISTORY ON THE FILMS

The Case of Tennessee Johnson’

N our last issue a correspondent (Ruth Elizabeth Shire, who is an American), wrote protesting against our film -reviewer’s grading of the film Tennessee Johnson. The protest was forwarded to G.M. who makes the following comment: "When I reviewed Tennessee Johnson I had no idea that I might be reopening some of the old wounds of the Civil War, but your correspondent’s letter suggests that some people will not let them be closed. Which were the ‘progressive organisations’ that protested against the film in the U.S« did they, I wonder, include the Daughters of the Revolution and the Klu Klux Klan? Your correspondent complains of the ‘blatant falsification of history.’ In this case it happens that I did take some trouble to check up on the facts as far as they can be discovered, but even so, since Mrs. Shire is an American, one might expect her to know more about her own ‘country’s history than any New Zealand iter. It is obvious, however, that there is more than one kind of America. There is, for instance, the critic of Time who, in the issue of January 11, said that Tennessee Johnson is one of Hollywood’s grown-up moments. Not only is it notably faithful to the facts of Johnson’s life but (it) actually illuminates a dark chapter in U.S. history. No more adult picture of Washington politics has come out of Hollywood. Reference to the American Dictionary of National Biography, the Encyclowdia Britannica, and to one or two other sources, would also support the argument developed in my detailed review (Listener, November 5), that the film was much above the Hollywood average of accuracy. Of course there still remains the great gulf of personal prejudice or preference, which no facts can bridge, between one interpretation of Johnson’s character and achievements, and another. This is not so much a matter of

reason as of emotion: it is the same gap as you might find between one person’s sentimental estimate of Charles I. as a sainted martyr and of Cromwell as a bigoted tyrant, and the exactly opposite view which somebody else would take. I remember that as a boy I hero-wor-shipped General Gordon and was greatly shocked when my headmaster declared that he was not a hefo but a bad soldier because he disobeyed orders. One might come much closer home and apply the same test to the memory of Michael Joseph Savage. It is. thus with almost any figure in history: but President Andrew Johnson was perhaps more unlucky than some. Southerners were suspicious of him because, although himself a Southerner, he remained loyal to Lincoln and the ‘Union, while Northerners, led by Thaddeus Stevens, reviled him because once the war over, he favoured reconciliation with the South rather than retribution and revenge. If this is "comforting the defeated in any war we win," and if it is to be scorned as bad policy, I wonder what your correspondent. has to say about Lincoln’s phrase "with malice toward none. . . ."? I can only hope that there will be more of Lincoln and Johnson and less of Stevens in America’s coming post-war attitude. However, in spite of this difficulty of personal feeling, I say emphatically that Tennessee Johnson did better than the average movie in maintaining some critical detachment; in showing something of Johnson’s grave faults as well as some of his virtues: and because it did this in conjunction with good direction, good acting, and good scriptwriting, I would still describe it as "the best sort of historical drama"-the same biographical sort as’ Pasteur, Zola and Marie Walewska, which is the best sort. Indeed, now that your correspond--ent has reminded me of this film’s outstanding qualities, I would go further, and if I had to choose not the Ten Best Pictures of the past year, but the Five Best, I would place Tennessee Johnson among them.