Boston Movie Festival: The Last Hurrah (1958)

In honor of Patriots Day Weekend, I’m watching and reviewing movies set and/or filmed in my hometown, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Title: The Last Hurrah
Release Date: October 22, 1958
Director: John Ford
Production Company: Columbia Pictures
Summary/Review:

Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) rose from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to become a four-time mayor of “a New England city.” Planning his campaign for a final term in office, he realizes that the dawn of the TV age will put an end to the traditional face-to-face means of campaigning that have made him a success.  Nevertheless, he continues to use the power of ward politics and patronage to ensure loyal support from his base. Skeffington has made a lot of enemies too, especially among the blue blooded Protestant elitess like newspaper publisher Amos Force (John Carradine) and banker Norman Cass (Basil Rathbone).  However, two men he grew up with in the Irish-American slum, businessman Roger Sugrue and Cardinal Martin Burke (Donald Crisp).

Much of the movie is seen from the point of view of Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter, later the original Captain Pike on Star Trek), Skeffington’s nephew who is a sports columnist at Force’s newspaper and is also Sugrue’s son-in-law, which is way too many coincidental connections if you ask me.  Adam provides the outsiders view that allows the audience join him on seeing what looks like crass politics is actually how Skeffington is taking care of his constituents. The standout set piece of the film involves Skeffington attending the wake of a man who was not liked in his community, because he knows that by appearing he could attract a crowd of people to offer support to the widow.

The film is based on a novel by Edwin O’Connor who was inspired by the colorful Boston mayor James Michael Curley.  Like Skeffington, Curley was a man of the people, but while Skeffington appears to be honest, Curley used graft to fatten his coffers.  Filmed on sets in California that look nothing like Boston, The Last Hurrah nevertheless captures the feel of Boston’s parochial political culture.  I particularly like the character actors who add flavor to Skeffington’s campaign, especially Edward Brophy as Ditto.  The only part of the movie that didn’t work for me was the conclusion which felt too stagey, although Skeffington’s final words are perfect.

The movie has a Frank Capra feel in the balance of sentimentality and cynicism along the lines of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or State of the Union (also starring Tracy).  Speaking of Tracy, this is the second movie of his I’ve watched this year after Bad Day at Black Rock and I’m really impressed with his work as an actor.  It’s also another great book adaptation by director John Ford.  Of course, now I need to read the book.

Rating: ****

Book Review: We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole

Author: Fintan O’Toole
Title: We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland
Narrator: Aidan Kelly
Publication Info: Highbridge Audio, March 15, 2022
Summary/Review:

Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole takes the Billy Joel approach to the history of his nation by starting with the year of his birth.  In 1958, when O’Toole was born, the republic was lead by conservative veterans of the Irish war for independence who prioritized cultural causes over all else.  The even more conservative Catholic church leaders aimed to make Ireland the model of their form of Christianity.  As a result, Ireland was an economically depressed and isolated nation among the most impoverished in all of Europe facing a crisis of massive emigration.

Coincidentally, the Irish government initiated plans for modernizing Ireland in 1958.  Over the course of O’Toole’s life the country has gone through remarkable change that’s seen the fall of solid institutions and the people of Ireland voting to legalize abortion and same sex marriage.  Part of the change comes from looking to the United States, makers of Western films the Irish saw themselves in leading to the popularity of Country music.  The presidency of John F. Kennedy and his visit to Ireland also stirred a feeling of Irish pride. American investment in tech companies also propped up the success of the Celtic Tiger economy and the inevitable crash of 2008. Looking to Europe also helped as Ireland worked their way through the process of joining what would become the European Union.

But the biggest change is in the Irish people themselves.  One of O’Toole’s recurring themes is the unwillingness to talk about the rot in the system that everyone knew was there.  In politics, the fantastically corrupt taoiseach Charles Haughey’s governed through the 1980s and into the early 90s before scandals finally damaged his party.  The Church would be rocked by learning of the secret families of famed bishops, the abuse and incarceration of children in Christian Brothers Schools and Magdalene Laundries, and worst of all the hierarchy turning a blind eye to priests’ sexual abuse of children. The Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland in 1968 and endured for 30 years adding a daily toll of violence to Irish life.  For generations a united Ireland was the only officially acceptable solution, but decades of violence changed the mind of people to support the peace agreement of 1998 that allows for a gradual reunification if the people of Northern Ireland chose it.

O’Toole observed many of the events he describes in the book from afar as a child and young adult (sometimes just watching on TV).  But as he becomes a journalist he’s often in the thick of things and is a first person witness to the historical changes in Ireland.  While not an autobiography, O’Toole uses his personal experience to enhance the history.  For example, he talks about how his family and community felt in 1972 that the Irish republic wouldn’t inevitably have to fight in a war in the North, which thankfully didn’t come to pass.  They also thought suspension of the unionist government in Stormont that year meant the Troubles were over, which unfortunately also proved to be false.  All told it makes for a fascinating and detailed history of modern Ireland.

Recommended books:

• Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age by Rosemary Mahoney
• The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace by Tim Pat Coogan
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Biting At the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair by Padraig O’Malley

Rating: ****

Book Review: Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

Author: Matthew Desmond
Title: Poverty, by America
Narrator: Dion Graham
Publication Info: Diversified Publishing 2023.
Summary/Review:

In the follow-up to his excellent work Evicted, Matthew Desmond examines the root causes of poverty in the United States.  He eschews the usual route of explaining why the poor are poor, but instead what the middle and upper class have done to impoverish the poor (an approach that ultimately implicates just about everyone who will read this book).  Exploitation of the poor falls on the hands of landlords, payday lenders and banks, employers, schools, the gig economy, and government regulations that encourage the opposite of what is supposed to be the path out of poverty.

Desmond has no patience for the oft-used”we can’t afford it” excuse for not alleviating poverty at a systemic level, outlining numerous actions we can take collectively the would address poverty well within the economy of the world’s wealthiest nation.  Desmond challenges readers to recognize how most of us in the middle and upper class benefit from exploitation and poverty and be willing to sacrifice these things to become “poverty abolitionists.”  Honestly, I regret listening to this as an audiobook because if I read it in print I would’ve highlighted key passages to share.  But it’s a short book and I recommend reading it if you care about reversing poverty.

Recommended books:

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
• The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson
• Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond by Marc Lamont Hill
• A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes

Rating: ****

Book Review: They Want to Kill Americans by Malcolm Nance

Author: Malcolm Nance
Title: They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency
Narrator: Ari Fliakos
Publication Info: St. Martin’s Press (2022)
Summary/Review:

Intelligence and counterterrorism specialist Malcolm Nance investigates what he calls the Trump Insurgency in the United States (TITUS).  Arising from rightwing militia groups, conspiracy theorists, and the bizarre following of QAnon, supporters of Donald Trump organized to attack the United States Capitol.  Nance describes January 6 in detail and the planning that lead to that date.

I would’ve liked to have seen more of the history of rightwing terrorism in the United States, because this didn’t arise out of nowhere, but as a focused work on the years of the Trump administration today, it does a good job summing up the current threat. Typically, I’d say that Nance’s writing style is alarmist, but with the Biden Administration focusing on normalcy despite the growing insurrectionist threat, perhaps alarmism is warranted. Hopefully the right people hear the alarm

Recommended books:

• What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
• The Whites of Their Eyes by Jill Lepore
• The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox by Stephen Budiansky

Rating: ***

Book Review: The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin

Author: Corey Robin
Title: The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
Narrator: Mike Chamberlain
Publication Info: [Old Saybrook (Conn)] : Tantor Audio, 2018
Summary/Review:

Over the past eight years, I’ve heard again and again from Democrats and pundits that Donald Trump is a huge break from the reasonable Republicans they remember working with in decades past.  There’s nothing more revolting than hearing yet another Democrat proclaim that we need “a strong Republican party.”  I’ve held the contrary belief that Trump exists on a throughline that ties him back on a consistent Republican party ideology dating back at least to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s (and those ideologies drew upon older ideologies of elitism and white supremacy that supported slavery and Jim Crow laws).  The thesis of Corey Robin’s book is that this throughline goes back even further to the 18th century British philospher Edmund Burke and others who formed the basis of conservatism in reaction to the French Revolution.

Robin notes that the current Trumpian state of the Republican party is in fact a result of popular Leftist liberation movements in the United States being utterly crushed over the past 40 years.  The Republicans chose Trump because they felt comfortable to do so with no constraints from the opposition.  This suggests that if Democrats truly want the “old Republicans” back they should end the practice of reaching out to them by moving right and instead embrace radical ideologies.

Some consistent aspects of conservatism that have persisted from Burke through today include:

• a desire to maintain hierarchical structures and opposition to movements of liberation
• borrowing tactics and rhetoric from the Left and bending them towards their own ends
• the perception that conservatism is acting in reaction to a perpetually dominant Left and thus a culture of victimhood even when they fully hold the reigns of power
• blending elitism with populism by making privilege popular

The book is compiled into a series of related essays rather than a straight narrative and some parts are better than others.  I found the primer on conservatism in the early chapters to be the most useful.  There are also essays on Burke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of Economics, and Ayn Rand.  The final chapter written about Trump during the first year of his administration is hopelessly out of date.

Favorite Passages:

“Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left.  Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders.  What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension.  For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.  ‘We are all agreed to our own liberty,” declared Samuel Johnson. “But we are not agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we take, others must lose.  I believe we hardly wish that the mob should have liberty to govern us.’ Such was the threat Edmund Burke saw in the French Revolution: not merely an expropriation of property or explosion of violence but an inversion of the obligation of deference and command. ‘The levellers,” he claimed, ‘only change and pervert the natural order of things.'” – p. 8

Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty – or a wariness of change, belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue.  These may be byproducts of conservatism, on or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression.  But they are not its animating purpose.  Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force – the opposition of the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere….

No simple defense of one’s own place and privileges – the conservative, as I’ve said, may or may not be directly involved in or benefit from the practices of the rule he defends; many, as we’ll see, are not – the conservative stems from a genuine conviction that a world thus emancipated will be ugly, brutish, base, and dull.  It will lack the excellence of a world where the better man commands the worse.” – p. 16

“There’s a fairly simple reason for the embrace of radicalism on the right, and it has to do with reactionary imperative that lies at the core of conservative doctrine.  The conservative not only opposes the left; he also believes that the left has been in the driver’s seat since, depending on who’s counting, the French Revolution or the Reformation.  If he’s to preserve what he values, the conservative must declare war against culture as it is.” -. p. 25

“This is one of the most interesting and least understood aspects of conservative ideology.  While conservatives are hostile to the goals of the left, particularly the empowerment of society’s lower castes and classes, they often are the left’s best students.  Sometimes their studies are self-conscious and strategic, as they look to the left for ways to bend new vernaculars, or new media, to their suddenly delegitimated means.” – p. 46

“But as that sense of conflict diminishes on the left, it has fallen to the right to remind voters that there really are losers in politics and that it is they – and only they -who speak for them. ‘All conservatism begins with loss,” Andrew Sullivan rightly notes, which makes conservatism not the Party of Order, as Mill and others have claimed, but the party of the loser.

“The chief aim of the loser is not – and indeed cannot be – preservation or protection.  It is recovery and restoration.  That is one of the secrets of conservatism’s success.  For all of its demotic frisson and ideological grandiosity, for all of its insistence upon triumph and will, movement and mobilization, conservatism can be an ultimately pedestrian affair.  Because his losses are recent – the right agitates against reform in real time, not millennia after the fact – the conservative can credibly claim to his constituency, indeed to the polity at large, that his goals are practical and achievable.  He merely seeks to regain what is his…”  p. 56

Recommended books:

• Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy Maclean
• Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 by Kevin M. Kruse
• What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
• The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History by Jill Lepore
• The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox by Stephen Budiansky

Rating: ***

Book Review: It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders and John Nichols

Author: Bernie Sanders and John Nichols
Title: It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
Narrator: Bernie Sanders
Publication Info:  Crown (2023)
Summary/Review:

The latest book from America’s beloved socialist grandpa has a provocative title.  So I was a little disappointed when a good chunk of the book was a memoir of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, helping to get Joe Biden elected, and a frustrating two years where the Democratic party failed to take advantage of their congressional majority to advance a progressive agenda.  Basically it’s a sequel to Our Revolution.  Mind you, I have great memories of attending a Sanders’ presidential rally on Boston Common, which was the last big crowd I stood in before the pandemic started.

But the title implied that this was going to be more of an analysis of what is going wrong in our country/world and how to fix it.  And it does get down to it eventually with a good synthesis on how the corporate and wealthy elites have created intense economic inequality.  The solutions, of course, are the many proposals that he and others have been putting forward, many based on what has worked in other nations as well as in the United States past.  It’s all very well-written, but also not anything particularly new to me, as I’m the choir to Bernie’s preacher.  I’m not sure if their is an audience who is not aware of these solutions already who would be receptive to hearing it from Senator Sanders (because believe it or not,  our beloved socialist grandpa is not loved by all).  But if there is, this would be a good primer for them!

Recommended books:

• Becoming a Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies & Advice for Changing Our World by Nick Licata
• This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler
• Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank
• Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by  Naomi Klein

Rating: ***1/2

 

 

90 Movies in 90 Days: Requiem for the American Dream (2015)

I’m kicking off 2023 by trying to watch and review one movie every day for the first 90 days, all of which will be 90 minutes or less.

Title: Requiem for the American Dream
Release Date: April 18, 2015
Director: Peter D. Hutchison, Kelly Nyks,  and Jared P. Scott
Production Company: PF Pictures | Naked City Films
Summary/Review:

Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at MIT, is better known for being one of the more outspoken intellectuals on the left.  This documentary is built on interviews with Chomsky where he discusses the great increase of income inequality in the United States since the early 1970s.  The film is based on Chomsky’s book of the same name and in it he breaks down “The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power.”  The interview sections are broken up with archival footage and animation based on the dollar bill. While I was already familiar with much of what Chomsky discusses in this film, I found his synthesis is well done and the movie serves as a good introduction to how we got to where we are now.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith

Author: Bryan Caplan
Title: Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
Illustrator: Zach Weinersmith
Publication Info: First Second (2019)
Summary/Review:

Bryan Caplan is an economist (at George Mason University no less) who lays out an argument for lifting restrictions on immigration. And he does so in graphic novel form, illustrated by Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame.  I’m naturally receptive to the idea of open borders as someone whose politics are informed by compassion for others and welcoming diversity.  But Caplan uses the economic consensus to make the case for how immigration benefits all people, even the natives of prosperous nations, in ways designed to appeal to the logic of conservative and libertarian mindsets.  Will it work?  Who knows, but I’m glad that someone is making the case and in such a fun, colorful medium!

Recommended books:

• The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson
• Maeve in America by Maeve Higgins

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Author: James W. Loewen
Title: Lies My Teacher Told Me
Narrator: L.J. Ganser
Publication Info: Recorded Books, Inc., 2019 [Originally published in 1994]
Other Books Read by the Same Author: Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
Summary/Review:

This book is an expose on why high school students hate history and why Americans in general are ignorant of the historical facts of the United States.  With the teaching of American history once again being challenged as “woke” and more ridiculously as “critical race theory” I thought it was a good time to revisit this book.  Despite the title, this book is not an attack on teachers but on history textbooks which Lowen describes in detail as containing many inaccuracies and irrelevant details, as well as a boring writing style.

I have to note that when I was in middle school and high school, far from being bored, I was obsessed with history.  I was privileged to have teachers who somehow dodged many of the pitfalls of American history teaching as well as the proclivity to learn a lot on my own through reading, watching documentaries, and visiting historic sites. I read the first edition way back when it came out in the mid 90s and remember it being mostly debunking the false histories propagated in several prominent history textbooks.  On this reading I found it was less about debunking and more about why history isn’t taught in a way that allows for critical thinking.

The original edition evaluated a dozen textbooks, while the 2004 second edition revisited some of those books as well as 6 new textbooks.  This third and final edition was identical to the third edition but with a new introduction that pretty much noted that little progress had been made.  The problem with history teaching isn’t simple as one might imagine, and while fingers can be pointed at right wing politicians and parents for objecting to teaching warts and all history, they are just part of many complex and overlapping hindrances.  From publishers who appeal to the lowest denominator to sell the most books to the authors whose names are on the cover having little to nothing to do with the books (and the ghost writers who do write the book having very little knowledge of the history), there’s plenty of blame to go around.

As someone who loves history and thinks that kids should love studying as much as I did and gain the sense of perspective that critical thinking of history provides, I find this is an important book and highly recommend reading it.

Favorite Passages:

When confronting a claim about the distant past or a statement about what happened yesterday, students—indeed, all Americans—need to develop informed skepticism, not nihilistic cynicism.

Recommended books:

• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz

Rating: ****1/2

 

 

 

 

Classic Movie Review: All the President’s Men (1976)

Title: All the President’s Men
Release Date: April 4, 1976
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Production Company: Wildwood Enterprises
Summary/Review:  This docudrama dramatizes the investigative journalism of Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) at The Washington Post to connect the burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices at Watergate to President Richard Nixon. It’s kind of fascinating to think of audiences watching this movie at the time of release when the events depicted had just happened but are already being shown with the sheen of historicity.

The acting is top notch with Redford and Hoffman joined by Jason Robards as the Post‘s editor Ben Bradlee and Hal Holbrook as “Deep Throat” among others. The movie does a great job of creating tension out of rather mundane tasks like making phone calls and taking notes so that it is very compelling to watch. The movie also incorporates actual tv and radio news footage from the time period which I think was something new for narrative films, although it would become more common. On the downside, there isn’t much characterization for the leads beyond that Bernstein is apparently the better writer and Woodward is more fastidious about getting the facts right.  I don’t feel that we get any sense of who Woodward and Bernstein were as people apart from being idealistic journalists.

While I won’t deny that this is an excellent film, it is a curious choice for the AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Films list.  I expect it is recognized for the film’s influence in dramatize recent political events as well as inspiring generations of idealistic journalists.  I also suspect it is considered an important film because it relates to an important event in American history.  More cynically, it could be that it’s about a significant event in the life of the Baby Boomer generation and thus deemed important because Baby Boomers remain the tastemakers of American culture.  All that aside, it’s an excellent film worth watching.

Rating: ****