Gabriel au-dessus de la Maison Blanche

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).

I call this a precode in an unusual sense of the term. "Precode" usually drums up visions of movies like "Baby Face" and "The Divorcée" - films filled with sexually controversial situations and language for that period of time (1928-1934). However, precode was more than this. It also involved political ideas that were over the top and the existential doubts that made the fine horror films of Universal Studios in the early 30's. This film is definitely a political precode. The censors would have never allowed such a film to be released just 18 months later. At this point I quote Wikipedia, which gives some context for the film:

"Filmed during the 1932 presidential election on the orders of media magnate William Randolph Hearst, the film was intended to be an instructional guide for Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidency. Hammond as he exists prior to his accident is an amalgamation of caricatures of Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's immediate predecessors. After his accident, he is Hearst's idealized image of the perfect president, the president he wanted Roosevelt to be."

Hearst always had great sway at MGM, with him also directing the career of his mistress, Marion Davies, at that same studio. President Judd Hammond in his "idealized" form is much more of a fascist than a socialist, though, declaring martial law and putting people in charge of trials because they have a grudge against the defendant. It is also interesting that Pres. Hammond after his transformation not only has a new interest in the welfare of the citizens, but he is rendered sexually neutral, addressing his former mistress as Miss rather than by her first name. It is like Judd Hammond has had some supernatural being possess his body more than it seems that Hammond has had some kind of transformation of his own world view.

Definitely recommended. I don't think I've ever seen a film quite like it.

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.

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.

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.

.