Wilson

I don't know how many modern-day film viewers would sit through this long a biography (154 minutes) of a fairly boring man but it moves pretty well and is generally entertaining account of our 28th U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson.

When I watched this, I was unfamiliar with the lead actor, Alexander Knox, and I still am! However, he did a fine job as Wilson. The supporting cast did have some "names," such as Charles Coburn, Thomas Mitchell, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Ruth Nelson and much more.

When they made Technicolor films of the 1940s, which wasn't often, they were very pretty and this one is, too. They also did a nice job re-creating the early 20th century.

It's a nice film but nothing memorable, to be honest, and certainly biased in favor of Wilson....but still worth seeing. With it's length, one viewing would be enough.

Let us be certain of one thing: Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924), Academician, Historian, Orator, President of Princeton University, Governor of New Jersey, and 28th President of the United States is a very important political figure in American History. He is usually credited to be one of the top ten great Presidents of our history, but these lists of historians are prone to change when new research shows previous ideas were wrong or too hagiographic towards the former President. In Wilson's case historians of his period are confronted with the problem that he had a great contemporary rival, the 26th President Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Both men at their best were terrific figures, who accomplished a great deal of positive social legislation (they and Robert LaFollette dominate this period: the Progressive Era), and both (with Roosevelt's predecessor William McKinley) made America a great power. But T.R. and W.W. were both great egotists, and had defects in personality and views that make their achievements questionable. T.R. loved the strenuous life, but he also loved war too much - to the point that his youngest son got sacrificed in France in the First World War. Wilson helped get the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and the Federal Reserve set up, but he was a Southerner who backed Jim Crow Laws. He did try to keep America out of World War I (as a boy he lived in Virginia and South Carolina during the Civil War, and saw Columbia, South Carolina destroyed - probably by Sherman's men). But he was willing to use our troops to "straighten out" Latin American countries: Mexico (twice), Haiti, the Dominican Republic. His creation of the first international peace organization, the League of Nations, was great, but flawed due to the U.S. not becoming a member - a flaw that Wilson's egotistic fight with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge over accepting the Treaty of Versailles guaranteed.

This film was made in 1944 by Zanuck, a Democrat. It emphasized Wilson as the far-sighted peace seeker, the forerunner of FDR (who was planning the United Nations). FDR actually was in Wilson's administration (he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, like his cousin TR had been in 1897 under McKinley). The audience of the time would have been aware of this. As most of the audience would be white, Protestant, and of anglo-saxon background, it would be assumed that the film would be well received. Actually it wasn't. In the midwest, with the heavy connections to Germany or Middle-Europe, and in Irish-American centers (Wilson was cool towards Irish nationalism)the audiences recalled the unpleasant intransigence and pig-headedness of the President. Zanuck had the film opened in his home town in Nebraska, only to find that few were interested in the premier of the film - they told him they had not liked Wilson while he was in office.

As it is the film is excellent in terms of production and cast, starting with Alexander Knox as the President. His is a great performance, which merited his Oscar nomination. But the film is only positive about Wilson (and correspondingly unfair to Lodge, who may have had doubts about the Treaty of Versailles, but was not conspiring to destroy Wilson - he only had to let Wilson do himself in!). As for the racist side of Wilson, to get a glimpse of it see THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, where the Wilson administration is determined to drive the black heavyweight champion (based on Jack Johnson, and played by James Earl Jones) out of the title he deserves to keep.

This is really a great movie. I've been trying to track it down for years and just found it on the Fox Movie Channel last night. The script is well written and for a Hollywood bio-pic it is pretty historically accurate. I thought Knox was excellent as Wilson and wished he had done more high profile movies. And I was also very impressed by the high production values.

Don't know how much Zanuck spent on it but it was all up there on the screen. The Technicolor of those times is always lovely to look at too. Of course it came out in the middle of World War II, so a slight excess of flag-waving is to be expected. And any cast of supporting actors that runs the gamut from Thomas Mitchell to Vincent Price can't be all bad either. An altogether entertaining top quality movie.

When watching this film one first has to take into account the fact that it was made in 1944, the heyday of patriotic Hollywood propaganda. Hollywood had joined the war just like the rest of America, and its job was to keep up moral, foster hope for a better future, and keep people doing their jobs in the war machine with enthusiasm.

If you can take all that with a grain of salt, then you will probably like Wilson, because the goofy and embarrassingly obvious moments of propaganda (and Wilson idolatry) are the movie's only major flaw.

What this movie has going for it is Henry King's direction, many very impressive big crowd scenes and great sets (where you can actually see the ceilings), Woodrow Wilsons somewhat tragic life story, and Alexander Knox who plays Wilson. Knox gives very endearing, powerful, and emotionally resonant performance. He makes Wilson a real character that comes through even the thick layers of propaganda. The rest of the cast is good as well (especially the women in his life), but it is Knox and King that carry the movie.

See it for Wilson's excruciatingly intense final political speech. It's forceful.

7 out of 10 (for great spectacle and emotional effectiveness).

"Wilson" is in the grand tradition of biopics of great men in which the subject has no significant faults and only a few foibles, and those serve mainly to humanize him. This is an extremely well-made movie on just about every level. It largely gets the history right, except where things have to be fudged to maintain the great man's image. One fact that's never mentioned, for example, is Wilson's reimposition of Jim Crow laws in the District of Columbia.

Perhaps most interesting is how the film handles Wilson's remarriage. His first wife died in 1914, and Wilson remarried in less than two years. His new wife was younger and more glamorous than the first Mrs. Wilson. The filmmakers include a scene in which the dying Mrs. Wilson tells her daughters that their father is a strong and good man, but that he needs the love of a woman. She thus exculpates Wilson from the unseemliness attendant with remarrying so quickly (though this haste was the subject of considerable gossip at the time).

"Wilson" is a well-made, entertaining and interesting period piece that provides some accurate history. Compare its treatment of President Wilson with the way in which presidents are depicted in film today -- Oliver Stone's "Nixon," for example. And can you imagine a widower president carrying on a romance in the White House in today's intolerant political and moral climate?