NFR Project: ‘The Power and the Glory’
Dir: William K. Howard
Scr: Preston Sturges
Pho: James Wong Howe
Ed: Paul Weatherwax
Premiere: Aug. 16, 1933
76 min.
The real story here is the debut of the brilliant screenwriter, Preston Sturges. He was destined to be the creator of screwball classics such as Christmas in July, Hail the Conquering Hero, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. However, he got his start as a serious New York playwright.
He went to Hollywood to make money. He did, but he was unhappy with the group writing process of the time, in which draft after draft was tinkered with by successive waves of itinerant screenwriters on a studio’s payroll. Sturges wanted to be the sole author of a film. So, he sat down and dreamed up The Power and the Glory, and wrote out not a synopsis, as was common, but a complete shooting script.
The head of Fox Studios, Jesse Lasky, paid Sturges handsomely for the script and, for the first time, gave him a percentage of the film’s profits. The remarkable agreement they cemented allowed Sturges to attend the development and making of the film, giving him a valuable education in producing and directing.
The film is unique for its time in that it uses a number of non-chronological flashbacks to tell its story. The studio was so impressed with this device that they dubbed it “narratage” and put up a plaque recording this fact at the theater where the film premiered. Decades later, film critic Pauline Kael would make the argument that this device presaged and perhaps inspired Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane script, which certainly bears parallels with this film.
It's the story of a rich, mean dead guy (Spencer Tracy, who ages from his 20s to his 60s in the film, pretty convincingly). Everybody speaks badly of him after his funeral. His only defender is his childhood friend and business secretary, who walks us with reminiscence back through the hidden details of the tycoon’s life.
He starts off as an unambitious, happy-go-lucky track walker for the railroad. He falls in love, gets married, and his wife (Colleen Moore) urges him to educate himself and rise in the company. He becomes a designer and developer, rises higher and higher, finally becomes the head man. He grows hard and uncaring, all business.
Then he falls for a young socialite, leaves his wife, gets remarried. In a plot twist that wouldn’t be allowed later due to the Production Code, his adult son impregnates his wife. The tycoon finds out about it and kills himself.
This fairly turgid proceeding is innovative in the way in which it is told. However, the themes of ambition and betrayal are familiar melodramatic devices. Tracy shows off his range in the film, and Colleen Moore, a silent comedy star, handles the role of his wife ably. James Wong Howe’s beautiful cinematography helps too. Altogether, a rare example of mature movie art of a kind that soon would no longer be made.
The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: She Done Him Wrong.
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