Yep, that Inherit the Wind.
Last
thing you expected to see in these pages, isn't it? I mean, the last courtroom drama you
saw kicking around here was A Civil Action, and we
all know how that turned out. I haven't even thought venturing through the
cinematic world of John Grisham, and the first person to mention My Cousin Vinnie
is going to get a punch in the face.
So. I was flipping through channels at four in the afternoon when I come across something. Inherit the Wind. Hmmm. 1960. Won some awards. No giant monsters, invading aliens or avenging zombie superheroes. Hmmm. The question of the day being: Is this really for AYTIWS? Will my readers even give a crap about a movie that doesn't contain any of the above listed things?
After taking two seconds to pretend to actually think about it, I shrugged, said, "screw it" and picked up my notepad. Of course you guys'll give a crap. After all, how can we truly tell a Bad Movie from a Good if we do not examine specimens from both categories?
So. Based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (not the general), which was, in turn, based on the 1925 trail of John Scopes, Inherit the Wind is about as fictional as you can get. Don't take this thing for the truth. The real Scopes Trial was a sordid, ugly thing that would make for a really depressing movie. Thus John Scopes becomes Bert Cates (Dick York), a small town schoolteacher who makes the serious mistake of teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution to his ninth grade science class. Doing so violates a state statue (the movie carefully avoids telling you which state), and Cates is carted off to jail.
Of course, this is the 20s and nothing much is going on in the country. It's not long before controversy is circling this Idyllic Little Town like a vulture. The "Hillsborough Monkey Trial" makes headlines coast to coast and two nationally famous lawyers converge on this Idyllic Little Town to argue Cates's case. One is a fundamentalist orator named Mathew Brady (Fredric March), three-time candidate for president. When he arrives, he and his wife get a parade through the town square, complete with marching band and commendation from the mayor.
The other is Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy), a liberal lawyer from Chicago(land) hired by the Baltimore Herald as Gates's defense attorney. He arrives in town with little fanfare and a lot of hatred. In the beginning only his client and his "friend," one Mr. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly), reporter for the Baltimore Herald, will even speak to him.
With these too legal giants battling it out what was a small, if highly reported, local matter soon boils into a symbol for the grand debate between science and religion. Which, as if you couldn't tell, is the whole point. This is why the true story of the Scopes trial would be so damn depressing. Real life isn't a symbol for anything. It isn't tidy enough. The real Scopes was pressured into breaking the law by the ACLU (who were, in turn, pressured by a local man in Dayton who, apparently, had a grudge against the town) so they could turn over Tennessee's anti-evolution law. None of this crap about believes or the Right of Man to Think. Nope. In the real world, high ideals only get put on trial when someone's personal interest is involved.
Small wonder I prefer the fiction.
Back to that fiction. As someone who had to take shit from unthinking fundamentalists throughout most of my childhood, I think you can all guess where my sympathies lay going into things. But it's amazing the amount of character development both Tracy and March manage to squeeze into a backdrop as static as a courtroom. The illusions they weave are flawless, and damn it all if I didn't find that Mathew Brady started to grow on me. I guess March disserved that Oscar he won.
Still, I wouldn't have lunch with Mathew Brady. One beer. Tops. Maybe. Now Drummond...there's my man, right there. If I'd had half the lawyerly skills this guy has I would've left those little Sixth Grade Spanish Inquisitors in my intellectual dust whenever they stepped up to me and told me I was going to Hell.
And, yes, that actually happened to me. More than once, for much the same reason as Bert Gates, I was condemned to The Hot Place by religious zealots who (much like the good people of Hillsborough) conveniently forgot that no person has the right to condemn anyone to Hell. These people were Protestants, after all.
No surprise that I can really get into Cates's situation. But even if I didn't have a personal connection to all this I doubt I would've been able to resist a performance like the one York gives here. Cates has the world at his fingers before all this. Decent job, nice place to live. Even a hot chick dumb enough to want to marry him. All of it goes down the crapper because he decides to stand up and speak his mind. He can have it all back, too. In a heartbeat. All he has to do is bend over and take it up the ass from The Man. Sure, no problem officer.
Keep in mind, though, this is still fiction. Historical and factual inaccuracies aside, what are the odds, for example, that a man who's branded a heretic by his community could fall in love with the Reverend's daughter? Well, sir, in the universe of Inherit the Wind it's pretty bloody likely. Cates's fiancée is none other than Rachel Brown (Donna Anderson), only daughter of the Fire and Brimstone Rev. Brown (Claude Akins). Somehow, I doubt Scopes was shagging the Reverend's daughter and the whole concept rates about a 9.0 on my "Oh, come on,"-o-meter.
At least, it did for a while. Then I stopped worrying and got drawn into this movie's universe. So he's snogging the Rev's daughter. Big deal. Especially considering what Anderson does with this role. More than a lady in waiting, Rachel is torn between her father's black and white world (no pun intended) and the fact that she loves this poor lug of a schoolteacher, regardless of his opinions on Creationism.
Were I a real critic, I'd probably point out the way that Rachel's plight dramatizes the plight of all young women as the struggle out from under their father's sphere of influence and prepare to enter into a relationship with another man, this time as an equal rather than an inferior.
But, then (as some of you are fond of pointing out) I'm not a real critic.
So it's
entirely as a fake critic that I praise writer's Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith for
the script that got them both nominated for an award. And I must give thanks to Jerome
Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (not the General).Without them, this movie would be nothing.
Literally.
And props go to director Stanley Kramer (yes, that Stanley Kramer). Without him, this movie wouldn't have been half as fun to watch. It must be tough as hell to try and make a movie move inside a courtroom. And to make it this interesting, no less. We all know how ass-scratchingly boring Court TV can be. But if Stanley Kramer directed Court TV I'd watch it 24-7. His camera all smooth and fluid motion here. He never needs any wild jump cuts to wake the audience up.
Of course, if the audience is listening to the dialogue and watching the actors do their stuff, then there's no need to wake anyone up, is there?
No zombies, no invaders, no kaiju. Excellent cast, somber direction, knock-your-ass-out script. All six of these things can make a good movie, but Inherit the Wind managed to do it with three. Watch this movie and you'll get a great time for your buck, regardless of your feelings towards my road dog, Charles Darwin.
We call him Chuck-D down in the 'hood, y'all.
