Gabriel au-dessus de la Maison Blanche

No need to repeat points already made about the film's interesting origin or plot line. For once, MGM's lavish production machinery is put to excellent use. The crowd scenes are quite convincing both in size and in tone. Catch that early scene where the silken Karen Morley makes an unexpected call on the newly sworn-in president. It's a minor masterpiece of adult-level innuendo, beautifully performed and directed. We know why she's there even if Franchot Tone's accommodating chief-of-staff takes a few moments to sink in. Yes, indeed, this is the White House and 30 years before the meandering young JFK. In fact, the script plays things revealingly cagey, never once disclosing Hammond's marital status-- a possible dictator, yes; but a possible philanderer, now that's just too touchy to reveal!

In fact, the subject matter is, on the whole, intelligently handled, even if it has to include moments of occult intervention-- a reference that usually puts a strain on my digestive tract. Director La Cava knew how to keep results under control, which is key to the movie's success. Sure, it's primarily a document of its time, but when I read in today's news about a "unitary presidency", and "presidential signings exemptions" from the laws Congress passes, I'm not so sure that the past remains the past. Anyway, this wacky excursion into the realm of political fantasy stands as a one-of-a-kind and should not be missed.

Fascinating and important historical document.

I want to briefly address the historical comments that this was "left wing" propaganda. This is a real misreading of the film and the historical context. This was an earnest, non-ironic celebration of proto-fascist ideals by Wm. Randolph Hearst, including not so veiled references to the "foreigners" who he felt were responsible for all ills in American Society. I am, by the way, a fairly consistent Republican, so I'm not writing on behalf of the left wing.

Let's not give such credit for "prescience" as to misread the film entirely out of its time, as a pre-emotive critique of FDR. Some modern viewers mis-interpret the film as "left wing" because, to modern eyes, it is so obviously "corny" and wrong-headed that they assume it is meant as ironic. Hearst was notoriously sympathetic to fascist ideas --and as this was pre WWII, the ideas of fascism were not yet fully discredited in the US, and enjoyed some widespread support given fairly desperate times and the intellectual movements of the day. This film was produced by Wm Randolph Hearst in 1932, before FDR was elected. It was held over for distribution by Louis B. Mayer (who did not sympathize with its fascistic views) till after the Hoover-FDR election, to avoid influencing the election.

The film does, of course, have relevance to FDR (and others) who would subvert the Constitution for expediency. However, to understand what the film maker meant, you have to view it as a pro-dictatorial document, by an individual who was not afraid to state those views, in the context of his time. Today, we have the luxury to see how obviously wrong those views were. But to miss the endorsement of proto-fascism in the movie is to forget the history of those who, in desperate times, with receptive elements of the population, were once willing to embrace a form of fascism in the USA.

Hearst's views were also, to some degree, responsible for an under-reporting of the ominous nature of Nazi Germany, as it is well documented that he instructed his news gathering organization to be sympathetic to that fledgling regime, and not to focus on abuses of Jews and others under the Nazis. This movie is a fascinating window into a mindset that was real, had an effect on history, and which found resonances in the ideas of Father Coughlin, Huey Long etc.

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I remember having seen this movie when I was very young, and it impressed me then as propaganda for President Roosevelt's New Deal. Now I know better, and have read something about its real history. William Randolph Hearst had become an FDR fan, and had this picture made by his Cosmopolitan productions, affiliated with MGM, in order to express what he hoped the new President would do. MGM's boss, Louis B. Mayer, a staunch Republican, shelved the picture until after the Roosevelt inauguration. Now we can see that what Hearst expected FDR to do by dictatorial means, the President achieved as a real believer in Democracy. The picture is intelligent; Walter Huston's performance, brilliant, as well as the supporting work by Karen Morley and Franchot Tone (was this his movie debut?). The direction by Gregory LaCava, exceptional, as he managed to make the audience believe in such far-fetched and unbelievable sequences as the "war" against racketeers with courts martial included, but he could not avoid the allusions to the Archangel Gabriel sounding ridiculous. Anyhow this a curious motion picture, and probably the most politically inclined ever made by a major Hollywood studio. But the fascistic leanings of Hearst could not be hidden, not even by a producer as liberal in politics as Walter Wanger.

Gabriel Over The White House comes to the movie going public, courtesy of William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions, at a very special time in history when there was grave worry as to whether America and the capitalist system would survive. What producer Hearst is telling us is how he feels that the Deity if he intervened would solve all our problems.

Walter Huston is our star/protagonist here, a newly elected president who is no Franklin D. Roosevelt, but rather more of a Warren Harding type. Catch Huston offering up the usual political pablum at his press conference in terms of what to do about the Depression. It's rather depressing. Later on at his cabinet meeting some issue about an appointment comes up and he just remarks that if you boys in the cabinet and party feel this way, who is he to question it.

But then our president who the Secret Service would NEVER let get behind the wheel of a car totals the White House limousine and goes into a coma from the concussion. It's at that point Huston gets a heavenly intervention into his nature and starts enacting policies, presumably that God and William Randolph Hearst would approve, not necessarily in that order.

Huston makes first an amiable nonentity and then a stern statesman in the White House. It's like he's playing two different parts and in fact that's precisely the point of the film.

Besides economic want, folks in 1932-33 were very much concerned about the rise of lawlessness, organized criminal gangs that grew out of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. A lot of what Huston does could be construed as worse than the disease in terms of civil liberties. Repealing Prohibition was something only a few wackos like Alfred E. Smith wanted and Smith was Hearst's mortal political enemy.

From the man who couldn't wait to get to war in Cuba in 1898, William Randolph Hearst had become a pacifist and an advocate for disarmament and he proves it by going farther than either the Washington or London conferences on that subject. Adolph Hitler was on the verge of becoming Germany's Chancellor at the time Gabriel Over The White House came out, someone like him wasn't factored into the equation for world peace.

All in the name of peace, prosperity, and the coming millenia and since it's all directed from heaven, we don't and aren't supposed to question it. The perfect world in the mind of William Randolph Hearst.

Gabriel Over The White House tells us a lot about America midst the Depresssion, our hopes, fears, and aspirations. And it offers the more authoritarian method of attaining those aspirations. It's an entertaining film, but it's more a psycho-political picture of the USA at that point in our history.

Anyone with an interest in American history or politics should see this--if you can find it! It's a fantasy about a political hack who is elected president during the Depression, who is transformed by an angel after an auto accident into a national savior--the perfect president, from a 1933 point of view. The result is just a bit scary. The fact that this movie came out during FDR's first few months in office makes it particularly interesting. It reveals a lot about what America was looking for then--and what it may be looking for today.