Inherit the Wind

Too bad the battle over evolution still seethes in certain parts of the country, which means the movie still has topicality. This earnest version of the famous Scopes trial recounts that milestone event Stanley Kramer style, which means the message comes through loud and clear. It's an actor's hothouse, two hours of dialog with little action except for the marching mobs. Tracy wisely low-keys it much of the time while March, unfortunately, sometimes borders on loud-mouth parody. At the same time, Kelly manages the professional cynic in amiable style. And I really like York as the skinny, slightly befuddled teacher whose dedication to science in the classroom causes the big ruckus. Then there's the rather plain- faced Donna Anderson (Rachel) shrewdly cast as Cates' (York) girl friend, but more importantly, functions as the town's barometer of opinion.

All in all, there's no doubt whose side the movie's on. At times the backwoods fundamentalists are near caricatures, aggressively smug in their trust in the Bible and loud rejection of science as to humanity's origin. But it's important to note that Drummond's (Tracy) basically arguing for freedom of thought and not atheism per-se. Doing the latter would, of course, have spelled box-office doom. Still, it was pretty gutsy of Kramer to take on biblical literalism, even in 1960. In fact, Drummond's religious views are never made clear, though Kramer has him add the Bible to Darwin's tome as the movie closes.

I think it's fair to say that the movie takes a basically liberal position toward religion and reason, rejecting only that which cannot stand up to science. All in all, it's a histrionic powerhouse that at times fairly crackles with emotional give and take in an epic cultural clash.

We have been blessed with many, many wonderful films over the decades, and we have also been blessed with seeing many, many fine actors and actresses. Here you have a film, with a host of stars; brilliantly portraying characters from a true story, with acting that is sublime. The dialogue is sharp, witty, and each performance is gripping. Small town America, religious bigotry are all handled in a sympathetic manner by the use of powerful acting. I gave this film a 10 purely because it is one of those rare gems that stay in the mind forever. It is truly memorable, and one can watch it time and time again to marvel at the superb portrayals. There is a saying that they don't make 'em like they use to. No sir, they certainly don't!

People like to comment on this film's "overacting". Try watching any of Joan Crawford's movies from this period and then get back to me. Inherit the Wind is a totally compelling story of the traditional school of thought versus a new scientific one. It centers on a small southern town coming to terms with Darwinism and its implications on Christianity. Spencer Tracy is an eloquent defense lawyer fighting to let evolution stay in the public schools. The script is quite good. The court room exchanges are thought provoking and moving especially when one knows about the real people and events behind the story. It's very difficult to come up with a criticism here. Not a weak performance to be seen.

Like Elmer Gantry I first saw Inherit the Wind in the theater in Brooklyn when I was 13 years old. Both of those films dealt with issues arising from the Roaring Twenties out of religion. At the time I thought both were great dramatic pieces dealing with issues of the past. I thought how much we'd grown up as a country from 1925 to 1960.

If you had told me that 46 years later we'd be fighting these same battles and that preachers had as much political power as they do I and many others would have said you were nuts. Yet here we are today in an age when Pat Robertson is taken as a serious political figure.

Inherit the Wind is a dramatization of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 when a biology teacher was arrested and challenged a law passed by the Tennessee State legislature making it a crime to teach anything other than the account of creation as set down in the Book of Genesis. Dick York is the biology teacher here, renamed Bertram Cates for the play and the film version of that play.

In fact all the names of the dramatis personae of the Scopes Trial have been changed to allow some creativity by the authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. Spencer Tracy and Fredric March play fictionalizations of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan named Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Brady respectively.

Of course that is what Inherit the Wind is primarily known for, a duel of double Academy Award winners. In fact Spencer Tracy received another Academy Award nomination for this film, but lost to Burt Lancaster for Elmer Gantry. That's ironic to me because I thought March captured the essence of William Jennings Bryan better. Bryan is a man whose time has passed him by. But he's still a hero to the folks of small town rural America in the south and middle west. One thing to remember is that while Bryan was a great orator and advocate, he had not practiced law in over 30 years when he stepped into the courtroom for the trial. If he had been a better lawyer, he might not have fallen into the one big trap Tracy set for him and the trial and the attending publicity might have been better for his side.

As good as Tracy is, the year before in Compulsion I think that Orson Welles captured the real Clarence Darrow in his character of Jonathan Wilk. No one in Hollywood could do long take speeches quite like Spencer Tracy though. I'm sure that's why Director Stanley Kramer hired him and they developed quite the screen partnership with Tracy doing four of his last five screen roles for Kramer.

Stanley Kramer made some impeccable casting choices filling out the minor roles of the various townspeople of Hillsboro, Tennessee. There are two that I would single out. Claude Akins who usually played tough guys in various action films was astounding as the town preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Brown. Sad to say there are still many like him out there. Akins's offbeat casting worked wonders, it turned out to be the high point of his screen career.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was Noah Beery, Jr. who is a farmer and who's son was drowned some time before the events of the film. Beery is the town non-conformist, he refused to allow his son to be baptized and Akins has said the adolescent is in hell because of it.

In a key scene when Tracy draws the ire of Judge Harry Morgan who sentences him to jail for contempt of court, Beery offers to put up his farm for collateral for Tracy's bail. Tracy's about to quit the case, but that simple gesture gives him hope, in the ultimate decency and clearheadedness of ordinary people. It's my favorite scene in Inherit the Wind.

Stanley Kramer lived long enough to see this film become so relevant for today's times. I wonder what he must have thought.

Sometimes a film becomes dated over time, that it lacks relevancy due to the way its filmed and its content. But in the case of Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer's production in terms of acting and staging is dated, but the themes are sadly still painfully relevant. Evolution vs. Creationism is still a hot button topic, though of course it shouldn't be (and the Supreme Court has ruled against Creationism as unconstitutional), but maybe even more shocking is to see the town of Hillsboro and how it could be like some small towns in America, mostly the South and the Midwest. One wonders if the mob could be as large and howling and fervent today as it was in Hillsboro (or how it was during the actual Scopes-Monkey trial in the 1920's).

But what stays most passionate about the film, and also at its most flawed, is its conviction about the issue. Kramer is a right director for this material, if not the best. It's full of passionate speeches- it could also be said 'preachy' not too ironically enough in some scenes- and blazing courtroom scenes that are not very realistic (the way the lawyers speak and speechify to the jury and the people in the courtroom and, of course, the audience in the theater), but somehow they're highly enjoyable. This doesn't mean the writing in the film is always great, or all of the characters. But the film is compulsively watchable 'issue' film-making, self-important but full of poignant touches.

The wisest choice that Kramer made, akin to what he did with The Defiant Ones, is put BIG actors in these BIG roles. Chiefly these are for Henry Drummond, the defense attorney played by Spencer Tracy, and the prosecutor Matt Brady played by Federic March (or rather, devoured by March). Like Frost/Nixon, the film becomes really as much about these two men, two old characters who have known each other over the years and have a real respect/hate relationship with one another (see the scene where they're on the rocking chairs to see their connection). So throughout the film, while the issue of evolution vs creationism is brought simmering to a boil, Tracy, a sensational actor, has to try to keep up with March who is so over the top that he cracks the ceiling with a sledgehammer.

Best of all is to see their showdown when Drummond puts Brady on the stand, a theatrical gesture but in keeping with the fact of the case (William Jennings Bryant really was called to stand during his own trial), and in having these two actors yell and stare and make big gestures at each other. If nothing else, it's worth it to watch the film for these two, though I might consider Tracy the winner overall, while March gets points in individual scenes, like when he grandstands towards the end when the case is dismissed (also when he stands up for the girl Rachel Brown when she is "damned" by her father, but as a calculating move to get her on the stand).

Which brings me to some of the flaws in the film. Kramer has a lot that he wants to say as a filmmaker, but he doesn't know how to tweak anything down past it being super theatrical. It would've helped, for example, to cut just a little of the dialog, some of the pompous exchanges between characters (albeit some of the dialog is actually pretty funny, mostly when Gene Kelly's reporter disses Brady). Another problem was Rachel Brown, who firstly is concocted as a contrivance (hey, let's make the daughter of the evangelical reverend also the fiancé of the science teacher), but more-so that she's just a lame character, poorly written like many characters end up being in Kramer films, if not anywhere near as bad as the daughter in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. And the last little moment of the film, when Drummond puts together two specific books together, is a completely tasteless gesture, meant to appease both the believer and non-believer sect after what was a satisfactory ending between Tracy and Kelly where the former tells off the latter.

But faults aside, the film does carry some legitimate power, and if nothing else I would watch it again just for the scenes between the two big stars. It's an actor's picture as much as a "message" picture, and as the themes carry some strong weight for discussion, not to mention the impressive semi-frightening sight of the Hillsboro religious mobs, it's really the actors who make it a (near) must-see.