The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover

Biopics that try to cover decades always fall into the trap of being a highlight reel of a long life. This picture suffers from that as well as choppy editing and a cheap look. The picture really comes together when Bobby Kennedy comes into the story. The first scene of Hoover and Kennedy together is the high point of the whole film. The dialogue and cat and mouse interplay between Broderick Crawford and Michael Parks just about redeem the film. Both turn in great performances in a film filled with reliable actors wasted in small roles. The Rip Torn subplot really doesn't go anywhere but just seems to provide an excuse for him to narrate the film. That said, a surprising amount of research went into this film, released just 5 years after Hoover's death.

In a well-crafted semi-documentary style, this film traces the career of John Edgar Hoover across the 48 years of his directorship of the FBI. The drama is interlarded with genuine news footage of key events, and as a whole the movie works well as a hybrid of fact and fiction. Broderick Crawford gives the performance of a lifetime as the pugnacious, jowly control freak with a vulnerable core. The essential contradictions of the man are cleverly exposed: the 'top cop' who never really was a policeman does not scruple to violate the constitution when it suits him, and the priggish crusader against moral laxity gets his quirky thrills listening to wiretaps of sexual liaisons. The casting is inspired. Quite apart from the marvellous Crawford, several Hollywood veterans turn in first-class performances - Dan Dailey is Hoover's sidekick Tolson, Jose Ferrer is the cynical McCoy, and Lloyd Nolan is impressive as the Attorney-General. Among the younger actors, William Jordan is convincing as John Kennedy, and Michael Parks' Robert Kennedy captures the vocal inflexions of the real man admirably: it is just a shame that the 'look' isn't quite right. Bobby was nothing if not clean-cut and athletic, and Parks plays him as a slightly dishevelled, shambling figure. Larry Cohen wrote, directed and produced the film, and his enthusiasm for the project occasionally leads him into error. Hoover is given too much credit (or blame) for the unravelling of Watergate. Where the film scores highly is in its depiction of the power struggle between the young intellectual Robert Kennedy and the declining but still formidable Hoover. The movie is also spot-on in showing how Hoover clung to office long after he had anything left to contribute. The politicians left him undisturbed because they feared him. Of the presidents and attorneys-general portrayed in the film, Nixon alone fails to emerge from the shadows. This can no doubt be explained by the fact that he was still alive in 1977: all the others were in their graves: dead men don't sue. There must have been a real temptation, when putting this film together, simply to trash Hoover as an unbalanced megalomaniac. Wisely, Cohen resists that pull, and shows his subject as a psychologically-deformed man who nevertheless believed that he was holding his country together and devoted his life to the cause. Hoover comes across as a cruel self-publicist, but also as a lonely man racked with hang-ups and inhibitions. He had no private life worth speaking of. He never married and was unwilling (or unable) to retire to a life of leisure. At one point in the film, his G-men describe him as a priest. And so he was - if you consider the guardianship of a nation's dirty linen to be a holy office.

A lot of commenter's seem to focus on the fact that it was cheesy or low budget or whatever--but i thought it was a rock solid biography of Hoover's tenure at the FBI. I never knew there was rampant corruption in that bureau for years and years until he took over. (look it up its true!) Movie doesn't praise him entirely nor does it condemn him either----its a completely low key sort of monotonous look at the man's life.

There are a lot of great details that are included here along the way. A lot of moments--in fact i would say the movie is worth seeing because of these moments. The scene where Hoover mourns the loss of his mom for example...or the scene where Hoover is determined to unmask Martin Luther King Jr as a fraud (wrongly of course--but still the movie's not condemning Hoover for believing that MLK Jr was some sort of anarchist---its what the guy believed and rightly or wrongly it is what happened and makes for an amazing scene between Broderick Crawford and Raymond St Jacques as MLK Jr.) There's a fantastic scene at the beginning where Hoover is busting some gangster or bootlegger or something and the guy (and the guy's girlfriend) are insulting him relentlessly and Hoover just stands there and smirks.

Broderick Crawford actually is wonderful as Hoover---you don't realize it while you're watching it because he's so stoic and sorta stone faced the entire time--but you absolutely know what he's thinking and feeling throughout every scene that happens---and not just because of the screenplay--you're able to get what J Edger Hoover is feeling because of what Crawford is doing--weather its slumping forward or grabbing onto his longtime friend's (and possibly gay lover) hand or just staring dead ahead while receiving awful news---he really brings Hoover to life in a way that somehow merges old school acting (just the facts ma'am reeling of paragraphs of dialog at a time) with new school method acting (really projecting an inner life through reactions or body movements) in many ways Mr. Crawford's role here really intermingles the 2 styles in a way that you don't realize while watching it was pretty damn revolutionary. (and not something that George Clooney could pull off as easily in "The Good German" tho he tried really hard to.) its not a great movie by any means--its a little long...and more then a little rambling in parts--but it is a very good portrait of a very complicated individual---and i do wonder why its not better known given Hollywood's love of making biographies of every known famous person under the sun.

That particular phrase from Lord Acton about absolute power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely is always the one that brings to mind J. Edgar Hoover and his Federal Bureau of Investigation. And it's altogether fitting and proper we should describe the FBI as his, seeing as how he ran it for 48 years and under 8 presidents.

I am glad that they showed that Hoover came into the Bureau as a reformer. It was a patronage cesspool under previous directors, in fact it had existed for 17 years before J. Edgar Hoover took over and had four previous directors. Hoover did do those kinds of reforms, made it a merit based agency given his ideas of what was meritorious. He set up a national fingerprint data base, something one can't conceive of in law enforcement now. And certainly the FBI did do yeoman service in apprehending and eliminating some of the well known gangsters of the twenties and thirties.

If Hoover had retired in 1945 with the close of World War II his historic reputation would be just about where it was in 1945. Sad to say he didn't, he got heady with power because he had dirt on everybody who was anybody in any field you want to name. That's intoxicating stuff.

I've never thought of Hoover as gay, a crossdresser or anything else in a sexual way. I think the man just had a low sex drive. A lot of that was rumors put about by enemies. He certainly made a legion of them. If power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, than Hoover never tasted those kind of rewards.

Broderick Crawford does a good job as the implacable and austere Hoover, however the film is essentially a one dimensional look at a most complex man. If Hoover was gay, his relationship with Clyde Tolson is handled most discreetly even five years after Hoover died.

This turned out to be the farewell film performance of Dan Dailey who played Tolson. Tolson apparently could smooth a lot of Hoover's rough edges out and on at least one occasion the film shows Tolson saving the publicity minded Hoover from a real public relations disaster.

A lot of familiar players dot the cast of The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover so if you're a stargazer you'll like the film. Still Hoover's long and varied career over some tumultuous American history requires a better study than this.

Casting Broderick Crawford as Hoover was a stroke of genius on the part of the casting director of this film. He's perfect for the part. He brings out the gruffness and arrogance of the character, while simultaneously showing the insecure, low self-esteem inner man that Hoover is portrayed as being.

We see him first as a young idealist, working in the Justice Department, wanting to protect the legal rights of immigrants and fighting the internal corruption of the FBI in the 1920's. Then he becomes the "Top Cop" of the nation and a publicity seeker with the help of Walter Winchell. And finally as an old man jeolously guarding his power and firmly entrenched in the political system. But more importantly, we see the dual nature of his morality: on the one hand, his fastidious approach to sexuality and his ego crushing sensitivity to his own unattractiveness; and on the other hand, his sessions-------bottle in hand--------listening to the sexual encounters on FBI surveillance tapes.

The film is not without humor, however. Look for a scene about disposing of a fly in Hoover's office.

In some ways, a waxworks of a film with actors looking and sounding like famous political leaders, but more importantly a record------part fact, part fiction------of a very complex man, who's personality and inner demons helped to form the concept of justice in the American public's mind from the 1930's until his death.