WILSON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 337, 7 December 1945, Page 14

WILSON

(20th Century-Fox)

HIS is the film about which its producer, Darryl F. Zanuck, is reported to have said that if it was not successful from every standpoint, he

would never make another movie without Betty Grable in the cast. Well, if the decision rested with New Zealand audiences alone, I am afraid we should have to resign ourselves to a very leggy future, for on the opening night of Wilson’s season in Wellington there were more wide open spaces in the theatre than I have seen since Citizen Kane. Fortunately, the box-office reception of the film in the United States appears to have been such that Mr. Zanuck will be able to recoup enough of his 5,200,000 dollars expenditure on it to divert his attention occasionally from Miss Grable. It is, of course, scarcely surprising that New Zealand fans have not rushed to welcome this screen biography of President Woodrow Wilson, for the subject, after all, is a very American one. It is, nevertheless, regrettable that so few of them are apparently taking the oppor‘tunity to see a really exceptional movie, one of the finest productions of its type that Hollywood has ever achieved. And I say this in spite of the fact that I saw Wilson under the most unfavoutable circumstances, the front rows of the theatre being occupied by moronic louts who amused themselves and enraged the rest of the audience by rolling bottles around the floor, and by making fatuous, loudvoiced comments throughout the screening. And yet I cannot find it in my heart to blame them utterly: it may have been that these morons were lured by the advertising, which promised them "a cast of 12,000 players and 87 song hits," and went expecting a super-musical show! * * % NYWAY; let’s forget them and the advertisements and the 87 song hits (I’d be very surprised if there are actually as many songs as that, and in any case they are mostly just snatches of sentimental ditties sung by Wilson and his family round the piano). And let’s forget also, if we can, that this is easily the most expensive film ever made, for, in spite of its lavishness, I am glad to say that it doesn’t ‘look it. The question of cost ‘is only important in so far as it indicates the -price which a Hollywood producer may occasionally be persuaded to pay, partly to gain prestige, but partly also to translate a worthwhile ideal into intelligent celluloid. And let us, since we wrangling that has gone on about the "propagandist" aspects of Wilson, the Republicans asserting at the time that it was a deliberate election boost for Roosevelt (but conveniently overlooking that Zanuck himself is a Republican and that the chairman of Fox was the late Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt’s election opponent!), while the Democrats hailed it as a timely argument for F.D.R.’s foreign policy.* *The U.S. Army, empowered by Congress, banned exhibition of the film to tll after the election, on the ground that it aig influence their votes. are not Americans, overlook all the

ET us, then, forget all this, and examine Wilson simply as an example of what Hollywood can do in one of its rare moments of insight and intelligence. There may be special pleading in the film: I am not sufficiently versed in the politics of the period to say. There is certainly a forthright general plea in favour of internationalism as opposed to isolationism. I understand also that there -is an element of fiction in some of. the scenes; for instance, Wilson’s biting denunciation of the German ambassador, one of the highlights of the action, has no basis in fact. And I suspect that the script-writer was not altogether fair to Senator Lodge (played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke) in making him the political villain of the piece without adequately explaining Lodge’s reasons for opposing Wilson’s League of Nations. A still more telling criticism is the deletion from the

version we see here of any sequence showing Wilson as the "political innocent" at Versailles, quite unable to cope with Clemenceau and Lloyd George (the film originally contained one such sequence, which was probably inadequate but better than nothing). And finally, it is a considerable fault that although Wilson drew his strength from "the people" and had a mystical faith in them, they are left completely out of the picture; no reason is given for their failure to support his League plan;.we move almost entirely in a realm of politicians, ambassadors, and statesmen, while the common man of America, whose vote ultimately controlled the decision, and possibly the fate of the world, is ignored, * * a ET the important thing about Wilson is that it is a serious and uncommonly honest and courageous attempt to reveal to us in dramatic form one of the least understood figures of our age and the ideas and ideals that motivated him. And even more important, perhaps, is the fact that this is a genuine tragedyone of the few great tragedies that the screen has ever attempted. There is no shirking of this issue; no effort is made to tone down the bitterness of Wilson’s personal defeat and humiliation by suggesting that he may have been wrong. Instead there is only the affirmation that he’ was unquestionably right, in his final words, "The League isn’t dead... . And I'll even make this concession to Provi-_ dence; it may come about in a better way than we proposed." Now, there may still be argument about whether Wilson was right or wrong, but the point is that this American film is not afraid to take a side and state a case, even though this means that, the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) American nation is, by implication, indicted of folly. Thus, at one leap almost, a major Hollywood studio has reached | maturity, has shown itself capable of assuming adult responsibilities, and although it would be rashly optimistic to assume that it will remain on this peak for long, the American cinema has at least shown us again what it can do when it tries. fo) 6 toh

HERE are elaborate settings in Wilson, including a full-scale reproduction of interiors of the White House; there is sumptuous costuming and much technicoloured magnificence to beguile the eye; and there are some highly effective supporting performances by Thomas Mitchell (as Tumulty), Ruth Nelson (as the first Mrs. Wilson), Geraldine Fitzgerald (as the second Mrs. Wilson), and by several others. But the whole colossal and costly structure is kept together, is given coherence and symmetry, by the art of one man: the hitherto unknown, 37-year-old Canadian actor, Alexander Knox, who portrays Wilson.

This, I agree with C. A. Lejeune, is one of the half-dozen great human portraits of screen history. Whether this is Wilson as he really lived I cannot say, but this is Wilson as our generation will now remember him-the idealist who captured the imagination of the world for a brief space with his idealism and was then. rejected; the schoolmaster who learnt his politics from text-books and dumbfounded the party bosses who had spon-

sored him for their own purposes by proving that he meant exactly what he said in his campaign speeches; the prim, shy, but rather arrogant intellectual in pince-nez who foundered in the muddy waters of international politics; the devoted family man who loved home life and simple songs and depended absolutely on the affection and sympathy of his womenfolk; the man of .peace who led his country into war and then found that the ideals for which he had fought were repudiated; the man who in his own time was branded a tragic failure but who, "like Jefferson and Lincoln, will be better understood by posterity than by his. contemporaries." All these

facets of Wilson’s character are contained in Alexander Knox’s performance. Whether some are more highly polished than they should be, even whether some should be there at all, I do not know. But I do know that this is great acting.