GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (1933) is a movie that really tests the viewers' ideals about government and democracy. Is it meant to be inspirational? Aspirational? Frightening? A cautionary tale? It's certainly a movie that makes viewers think.
Walter Huston plays Judd Hammond, newly elected President of the United States. The country is in the midst of an economic Depression, with millions out of work and starving, but President Hammond is happy to enjoy the comforts of his position while serving as a pawn of his political party. He has no intentions of fulfilling campaign promises or reforming the country. One character notes, "The right man in the White House can bring us out of despair, into prosperity again." It is clear that Judd Hammond is not the right man.
But after a serious head injury, the President is reborn as a crusader for the greatest good. He takes action to help his suffering people, firing any cabinet members that stand in his way.
The President could be suffering from some sort of brain damage, or perhaps Judd Hammond's body is being possessed by the angel Gabriel, God's messenger to the people. But, as Franchot Tone's character points out, is not Gabriel a messenger of Wrath?
The new President Hammond starts as an idealistic reformer, but ultimately transforms the United States government into a Machiavellian dictatorship, complete with firing squads. Everything the President does is for the good of the people, but the ends cannot always justify the means. He supports the unemployed masses, promising to stimulate the economy and bring back prosperity. But when he meets opposition on Capitol Hill, he dissolves Congress and takes sole control of the government under martial law.
To combat gangsterism, the President repeals Prohibition and establishes government-funded liquor stores. Violent resistance from the gangsters is seen as a declaration of war on the United States and a special police army is created to wipe out the racketeering scum.
It's unclear how director Gregory La Cava wants the audience to feel about President Hammond. On the one hand, he is a champion of the people, fighting for the common man and getting results. But he is destroying the American democratic system in the process. Senators are outraged when the President threatens to dissolve Congress, and rightly so. Yet characters speak in great admiration of the President after he bullies the nations of the world into accepting his vision for international peace.
Coming at a time when Americans looked to their leaders for help, GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE might have been a Depression-era fantasy, giving audiences the strong political leader of their dreams. Or it might have been a caution of the slippery slope of government involvement. The film is fascinating and controversial from a modern vantage point. The economic stimulus idea has gained some relevance in recent years, though the shadows of the fascism and Nazism to come in that decade are unsettling to see (especially portrayed in the United States).
