THE ROOSEVELT STORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 515, 6 May 1949, Page 12

THE ROOSEVELT STORY

(United Artists) NYONE who hasn’t a clear idea of Roosevelt’s claim to greatness wiil learn a lot from this feature-length assemblage of newsreel shots about his political career, from his early Tammany Hall days as an unsuccessful backer of © Al Smith, to the last speech to Congress after his return from Yalta. The most interesting part of the film, mainly because of the stark, factual picture of the depression which it builds up, is that showing how he first became President on his New Deal programme, Much of the film is devoted to Roosevelt’s more celebrated political acts-the fireside chats, the introduction of the Social Security and Fair Labour Standards Acts, the’ "One Third of a Nation" speech, the "Full Speed Ahead" speech, the ridicule of those who attacked his dog Fala when he was, standing for the Fourth Term, and so on. Much of the setting also is a wartime one, and Pearl

Harbour, the declaration of war, his meetings with Churchill and Stalin, are some of the highlights. Little is seen of his family or private life, and even the infantile paralysis attack is dealt with only from a distance. The picture generally is frankly sentimental and propagandist, and the commentary, written by Lawrence M. Klee, is spoken by voices representing ordinary. United States citizens-the little men for whom Roosevelt did so much in his long years as President. It is often crude, harsh, and unsubtle. But perhaps it gains in strength from that.