Potenza e gloria

A precursor to "Citizen Kane" in its analysis of the life of a just deceased tycoon, here reviewed by his faithful secretary in a series of interlocking flashbacks. In Spencer Tracy's 15th film he already looks middle-aged even in the scenes where he is meant to be young!

A little silent-screen type emoting is understandable given the vintage but this is a most enjoyable, well-written drama.

The film begins with a funeral to the sound of "nearer my God to thee" and the soundtrack includes Gounod's "Ave Maria" as well.

This is the story of a self-made man,the American dream come true.From a track walker to a railway society tycoon,through the strikes and the strife of life ,Tom makes his way of life,abetted by wife Sally who taught him reading,writing and arithmetic when he was already a grown-up.

This is some kind of "Citizen Kane" in miniature ,relatively speaking ,a decade before Orson Welles' masterpiece happened.The story is told by Tom's good friend Henry,with wife making frequently unsympathetic comments .The movie alternates between present and past,back to childhood's days when Tom taught Henry to swim and to dive.

The story is a bit melodramatic ,mainly towards the end when the son falls in love with his stepmother and illustrates the famous sentence "you gain the world and lose your soul" ,which Tom's last word reinforces.

Henry was an educated man whereas Tom was essentially a self taught person .Tom got it made ,but in the end ,according to Sturges' screenplay,it's Henry's way which leads to true happiness.

The story of Tom Garner opens with his grand funeral and is told through a series of elegant flashbacks narrated by his faithful lifetime friend Henry. Henry and his wife debate whether Tom was a great man and a genius or an utterly worthless scoundrel. The film is beautifully written, acted and directed, and I highly recommend it.

Tom was the fabulously rich and successful owner of a large railroad, dominating his board of directors and his competition, terrorizing his employees, slaughtering strikers. Tom's ambitious wife Sally was responsible for all of Tom's success. When he met her, he was illiterate and entirely content with his work as a trackwalker for the railroad. Sally teaches him to read and takes over his trackwalker job while Tom goes to school. He starts to rise one step at a time through the railroad hierarchy until he eventually takes over as president.

But as Tom becomes a business tycoon, his marriage to Sally gradually falls to pieces. His spoiled son despises him, and he takes up with a much younger woman (the aptly named Eve), with predictably catastrophic consequences. In his business life, Tom is a total success; in his personal life, a disastrous failure. Much like the Hearst figure in "Citizen Kane," Tom symbolizes the best and the worst of the capitalist system.

Spencer Tracy is terrific in the role of Tom Garner and the business scenes ring with authenticity. Colleen Moore is also excellent as Sally; both of them age beautifully in the multi-generational story. The film was written by Preston Sturges, but is nothing like the screwball comedies for which Sturges became famous.

During Spencer Tracy's period at Fox, he mostly played as rugged action adventure heroes in forgettable programmers. Very rarely did he get any parts that demonstrated his talents until San Francisco when he was with MGM. The Power And The Glory should have been the career changer that San Francisco later was.

This film is light years different than what he was doing at Fox Films and more typical of his MGM period. It tells the story in the same fashion that Citizen Kane later perfected of the life of a railroad tycoon after his demise. Instead of from many points of view, the film is only told from the point of view of Tracy's best friend as he recalls different points of Tracy's life out of chronological order, the friend being played by Ralph Morgan.

There is an important difference in subject matter as well. Charles Foster Kane is a kid born to wealth and privilege whereas Tracy's Tom Garner was a self made millionaire. Starting out as a track worker and encouraged by his first wife who was a school teacher, Tracy goes to school learns the engineering trade and begins acquiring stock.

But as the demands of acquiring and later maintaining a fortune draw from his time Tracy is less and less attentive to his wife Colleen Moore who becomes something of a harpy. They have a son in Phillip Trent who grows up spoiled rotten.

Later on Tracy marries the daughter of another railroad owner, the much younger Helen Vinson. She carries the ultimate seed of his downfall.

Although the subject matter is far from what he later would do as a director, Preston Sturges wrote the original screenplay for The Power And The Glory. As Sturges was a well read man he might have taken his inspiration in part from our 17th President. Andrew Johnson was a man who did not spend a day in school and what education he did receive came from his school teacher wife. The early years of Tracy and Moore play very much like Andrew Johnson and Eliza McCardle Johnson were supposed to be.

In the underplaying and subtle style that he practically took a copyright out on, Spencer Tracy carefully delineates a character at all stages of his adult life that holds your interest throughout. Colleen Moore does as well. It's a pity that The Power And The Glory was one of her last films, she made the transition from the silent screen apparently easy. But she retired young and wealthy and saw not the need to work. And even though she made a career of playing 'the other woman' Helen Vinson actually does get to marry Tracy as a second wife though in point of fact she is indeed the other woman.

The Power And The Glory proved that they were asleep at the switch at Fox. Tracy's performance should have led to greater roles for him. He would have to wait until he was at MGM for his real glory years.

This movie, apart from its innovative narrative style and a few great scenes, is rather disappointing. It tells the story of a millionaire, Tom Garner, by inter-cutting between two series of flashbacks, one telling the story of him as a young man -- his rise; the other of him as an old man -- his fall. The inter-cutting, though innovative, doesn't serve much purpose, and seems haphazard. Moreover, it concentrates too much on him as an older man, on the lurid melodramatic tale of how he and his wife meet similar ends through suicide brought on by the adultery of their respective spouses. Hardly as much time is spent fleshing out the character of Tom himself. No scenes are given to the development of the adult friendship between Tom and Henry, Tom's best friend who also serves as narrator of the film. This makes a scene where Henry argues with his wife that Tom was a good man seem pretty hollow; it's hard to take a stand, since so little insight is given into what made Tom truly tick. If this film served as an inspiration to "Citizen Kane," at least those behind Kane remedied the main flaw of "The Power and the Glory," by fully realizing and exploring its main character. 6/10