Just perfect...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Boring

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

My first viewing of this movie got kind of strange. It starts with the death of Richard Forrest. We never meet him, because he is already dead, but the whole film revolves around the people he knew.His widow, Kathryn, is a woman who hides so much knowledge, and keeps everyone in the dark the entire film. Spencer Tracy meets her after Richard's death and his job is to investigate what happened to Richard and why. It is one of Tracy's few roles in a film noir type of setting.George Cukor directs this and throughout there is a lot of mystery and suspense. The music is much like many noir films in that it ramps up whenever something strange happens. Some of the actors in this cast would go on to many other things. Percy Kilbride would go on to be Pa Kettle, but in this film is a cab driver giving passenger Tracy knowledge to chew on about the people he is investigating. Richard Whorf would go on to be a television director doing a lot of Paul Hennings classic sitcoms of the 1960's. Darryl Hickman, Dwayne Hickman's older brother and the more serious actor of the two is one on those conspiring to keep Tracy in the dark. The most haunting thing about this is a sequence later in the film. Tracy catches up with Hepburn trying to destroy the evidence he is not supposed to see.It seems Richard Forrest, the dead hero, had gone from super patriot to evil sympathizer when he died. He has stashed money, papers and plans to pit groups against each other and use each groups hate to divide and conquer them. While this film is referring to Facists and Nazis, the themes and the group that the plans were designed for using each groups hate to isolate and conquer it sounds just like politics today. As Hepburn tells all to Tracy, it sounds too spooky to believe how much Nazi plans are still being used worldwide. Hepburn's (Mrs. Forrest) speech about all the evil being planned to Tracy is an amazing testament to the ways some things do not change, even after those Nazis are gone.

Spoiler Alert. After hearing about this film for years, I finally watched it tonight on TCM. For the comments about it having been an echo of "Citizen Kane" and a reference to William Randolph Hearst, it seems to me that the "great man" is based on Charles Lindbergh. After all, Lindbergh was the most admired public figure in the U.S. after the 1927 trans-Atlantic flight and then following the kidnapping and murder of he and Ann Morrow Lindbergh's son in 1935. But the kicker was Lindbergh's involvement, nay his leadership of the America First movement that cinches for me that Mr. Forrest's "great man" -- who is shown to have secretly been behind a conspiracy in the guise of a patriotic movement -- is meant to refer to Lindbergh.

No doubt its heart is in the right place, but this is a ludicrously bad movie. We have no idea why Forrest was held in such near-universal adulation, particularly by the newspaperman O'Malley who seems to have had little difficulty seeing through Forrest's European counterparts.The dialogue is terrible - stilted and highfalutin from the outset before heading downhill, with Tracy and Hepburn making speeches ostensibly to each other but in fact to us.Pleasure comes late in the piece when it starts to work as unintended comedy, Christine's death being in the Little Nell class of guffaw-inducing departures.

All the major powers were spending huge sums of money and effort to influence public opinion prior to and during WWII. This film falls into that category.This film did not serve as a wake up call for those who opposed the war. We had already entered the war against the Nazi's, and the thinly disguised attack against Lindberg was unjust because once the war started, he threw his name and reputation behind the war effort.Despite Lindberg's contribution for wining that war, he has always been a target for those who found his constitutional and legal fight against the illegal and unconstitutional actions of President Roosevelt.For those who have commented that today's politicians should watch this movie, they should know that President Roosevelt had by 1942 lied numerous times to the public about his intentions to get into the War on the side of Great Britan. Lindberg's political movement was constitutional and legal. Only his judgment should be questioned.History has vindicated Roosevelt's lies and illegal acts against neutrality, and his personal motive to fight with he Allies. But what if the Allies had lost, or the War dragged on for over a decade? Depending on your politics, propaganda is good or bad. Was Washington a traitor or hero. It all depends on who is making that judgment.This site is dedicated to art and film as an art form. Unfortunately, some of the films made at this time are propaganda, and a target for condemnation for the corruption of true art.Art that is timeless, because it touches on universal truths while temporary fashions come and go.This film fails because it has an unrealistic plot line, situations that are unbelievable and younger viewers with a weak knowledge of history would fail to understand what the plot attempts to portray.The story begins by showing a speeding car in a hard rain, and then crashing. There is a universal mourning of the American public. but five minutes into the film which expects us to believe that this great man, is reckless since he speeds in tremendous storm and doesn't have the sense to slow down approaching a flimsy wooden bridge. But Forrest was a man who has the resources, or had enough influence to build a steel and/or concrete bridge. Key to the plot is that Hepburn, who plays Forrest's young wife, knows the bridge has collapsed and he will be killed. It also requires us to accept that she knows Forrest would be killed. But hasn't everyone heard that "it was a miracle that he/she survived the accident?" The writer's must give Hepburn's character the courage to kill Forrest, without actually killing him. The speeding, the collapse of the bridge,and certain death must be accepted by the viewer to allow Hepburn's canonization at the end of the film. Never mentioned is the possibility that some innocent person may get killed. That question is never asked by the character played by Tracey, who goes from hero worshiper discoverer of the REAL Forrester. In the space of several days, he unravels what it took Hepburn years of married life to determine. We must suffer with her anguish as she determines that she must kill her husband, but save his public reputation. Of Course Tracey talks her out of such a scheme-for the good of the country. The youth of the country may be lead to believe that Stalin never existed, or that his ideas of conquest were much different than Hitler. Though Stalin's crimes against humanity were at least as bad as Hitler's, he had the better fortune to have switched sides and were now one of our allies in 1942.Richard Whorf plays Forrest's creepy assistant. First he recommends that Hepburn speak to Tracey-is not the sort of journalist who can be put off. So what does that say about the others? There all dopes, or Hepburn should talk to the smartest one? Doesn't make sense to me.Of course Tracey discovers everything, and Whorf's character plots to kill Tracey and Hepburn in the ancient fort, and destroy evidence at the same time. Alledgedly there is no comedy in this film, but I laughed at the idea of starting a fire with gasoline, expecting to kill Tracey and Hepburn and all the evidence. So you start a fire and shoot Hepburn? Ask any fireman about destroying files or papers, especially when a structure is primarily stone.What purpose is served by shooting Hepburn other than giving her a death scene? Is it to avoid the unanswered question of putting innocent people at risk? I recently saw this film on TCM and the moderator stated that Louis Mayer stomped out of the theater because the film attacked his friend William Randolph Hearst. That statement is not correct. Hearst was the real person fictionalized in Citizen Kane. Hearst was never a beloved hero like the man who flew the Atlantic and earned the hearts of his fellow Americans, who then suffered through the kidnapping of his child. Lindberg, not Hearst, became one of the leaders of a political movement that advocated strict neutrality.Whatever faults Lindberg had about his failure to see Hitler for what he was, there are many more who did not see Stalin for what he was.Once the war started, Lindberg threw himself and his tremendous prestige into the war effort. But some never forgave his opposition to the illegal violations against neutrality. Political opposition to war is a constitutional right, regardless of the "justice" of the war.