Inherit the Wind: screenplay by Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee; directed by Stanley Kramer; starring Spencer Tracy (Henry Drummond), Fredric March (Matthew Harrison Brady), Gene Kelly (E.K. Hornbeck), Dick York (Bertram T. Cates), Claude Akins (Reverend Jeremiah Brown), and Donna Anderson (Rachel Brown) (1960): As much about McCarthyism and the Red Scare as it is about the teaching of evolution in American schools, Inherit the Wind is loosely based on the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' of the 1920's. In that trial, the State of Tennessee prosecuted a substitute teacher for teaching evolution in a high-school biology class.
That set-up only partially remains here. The prosecuted high-school teacher in Inherit the Wind is full time and, to complicate things dramatically, engaged to the daughter of the preacher who has him brought up on charges in the first place. Yikes!
And as Dick York's schoolteacher lives in a small town, there's really nowhere for him to escape the growing mobs of angry, placard-waving, effigy-burning Christian fundamentalists except for the town jail, where he plays cards with the sympathetic, apologetic jailer.
In the real trial, famous American defense lawyer Clarence Darrow led a team of lawyers defending Scopes. The prosecution was led by former Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Acerbically reporting on the whole affair was the famous H.L. Mencken.
Here, Matthew Harrison Brady stands in for Bryan, Henry Drummond stands in for Darrow, and Hornbeck stands in for Mencken. While the supporting roles are capably acted, and while Gene Kelly holds his own as the sarcastic, cynical Hornbeck, it's Fredric March and Spencer Tracy who command the stage here.
March is bombastic as the fiery, Bible-thumping Brady, while Tracy is slightly cooler and much funnier as the 'famous agnostic' Drummond. That the men share a history going back 40 years and were once friends adds another level to the intellectual conflict: both are disappointed in the path the other has taken, though only Drummond strives to cool things down, unsuccessfully, throughout the trial.
With more than an hour devoted to the courtroom proceedings -- many of them closely following the real arguments -- Inherit the Wind succeeds or fails on the basis of the drama of two men talking. I think it succeeds grandly, as these two old, titanic actors are given lines and scenes that allow for high drama centered around people talking, arguing, shouting, and occasionally mopping their brows in the steamy courtroom, in the steamy hotel, or on the steamy hotel porch. It's hot, dammit!
I imagine a lot of people would be turned off by a drama of ideas, especially one in which fundamentalist Christianity takes the intellectual and moral beating of a lifetime. I think it's swell, and in a way an obvious forerunner to the work of Aaron Sorkin, though here much of the talking is done while the characters remain mostly stationary. Highly recommended.
Bad Day at Black Rock, written by Millard Kaufman and Don McGuire, based on the story by Howard Breslin; directed by John Sturges; starring Spencer Tracy (John Macreedy), Robert Ryan (Reno Smith), Anne Francis (Liz Wirth), Dean Jagger (Tim Horn), Walter Brennan (Doc Velie), Lee Marvin (Hector David) and Ernest Borgnine (Coley Trimble) (1955): Great, terse, tense showdown movie of the 1950's that can be read (like High Noon) as a parable of the Red Scare and its attendant McCarthyism.
It's late 1945, and Spencer Tracy's Macreedy is a WW2 vet of the Italian campaign looking to give a posthumous medal to the father of the Japanese-American soldier who died saving his life (though not his left arm). So Macreedy comes to the small Southwestern desert town of Black Rock by train (a train that hasn't stopped there in four years), only to discover that the soldier's father is missing and the town itself is run by criminal Reno Smith.
The action that ensues over the next 24 hours (or 82 minutes of film time) sees the initially depressed and passive Macreedy eventually rediscover his will to live -- and his contempt for bullies, cowards, and murderers. The aging, overweight Tracy initially seems like an unlikely action hero, but he eventually shows why you don't mess with Spencer Tracy. And that includes you, Ernest Borgnine!
The direction by John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven) is taut, setting the growing suspense against the widescreen Cinemascope background of the desert, the distant mountains, and the sky. The writing is solid and understated. The acting throughout is superb, with a lot of solid actors old (Tracy, Walter Brennan as the town doctor, Dean Jagger as the browbeaten sheriff, and Ryan) and fairly young (Borgnine, Anne Francis and Lee Marvin). Unlike High Noon, this film allows the growing heroism of its protagonist to effectively rally the decent people of the town to him. It's an interesting contrast to observe. Highly recommended.
