This is movie is still powerful more than sixty years after it was first released.
Here a budding journalist is told to investigate the story of an honest man campaigning for an office. Jack Burden (John Ireland) goes to do a story on Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford). Stark is certainly an honest man and also a family man, with a kind wife Lucy (Anne Seymour) and adopted son, Tommy (John Derek). Naturally, he doesn't win the election so his wife continues to tutor him and he becomes a lawyer and eventually rises to fame after a devastating event where, during a simple fire drill, the fire escape stairs collapse and a dozen children die. Stark sues the man responsible and is now a known man. He decides to run for governor and the other campaign encourages this because if he runs, then the votes will be split between him and the other candidate so the third candidate will win. This is how Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge) enters to manage his campaign. Jack continues to write his stories on Willie. After drinking some alcohol (Willie is not allowed to drink because his wife is against it), Willie becomes more impassioned about his cause though he still loses the election. (Apparently this is also when the affair between Willie and Sadie begins, though I did not pick up on this.)
Four years later, he runs again and this time he wins, but he uses unscrupulous methods to get the victory. Willie is no longer the small town, honest man he once was. Certainly he is doing some good things, such as building a free hospital for the people and schools and colleges, but he is doing so many evil things and alcohol is becoming more important in his life. He is also no longer being loyal to his wife, having affairs with Sadie and later with Ann (Joanne Dru), the love of Jack's life.
Needless to say, just as the title suggests, Willie falls at the very end. But tons of stuff happens before then. Jack is asked to dig up some information on the attorney general, and Ann's uncle, Judge Stanton, but he opts to keep the incriminating information hidden though he turns it over to Ann so her brother, Adam (Shepperd Strudwick) can take over as head of the hospital that Stark built. However, Ann turns these over to her lover and this comes back to bite Jack as Willie is being impeached and now the senators will no longer be loyal to Stanton. Judge commits suicide. This causes Adam to become angry and just after the impeachment trial is over and Willie has won, Adam shots Willie while he is also shot and killed. Both die.
And they are not the only ones. Tommy is in college by the time his father is governor but he behaves badly, not listening to his football coach and driving drunk. He does get into an accident and the girl in the car with him dies, eventually. Her father wants justice and though Tommy has no problem admitting that he was drunk, his father refuses to admit it and has the father done away with (presumably beaten by one of his men, Sugar, his main minion with a stutter [Walter Burke]). The discovery of the body is what leads to the impeachment trial, though the people of the unnamed state rally around Willie; he is their God and saver. Later Tommy plays in the football game after his father insistence and ends up being paralyzed for life. He will forever pay for his father's sins.
The film contains tons of plot for a film not even running two hours in length, but it is also a great character study of two people: Willie and Jack and how they change throughout the course of the film. They both start out good and both fall, but Jack tries to pick himself up again and toward the tail end of the film, he leaves Willie Stark's campaign. The acting, with the noticeable exception of Dru, who is nothing more than a glorified rag doll, not looking at the men whenever they have a grip on her, is amazing with two of three nominated people winning Oscars and Crawford certainly deserved his win with McCambridge doing quite well.
The film still is relevant today and one of my favorite films from 2011 The Ides of March, much of the same thing happens. Unfortunately, politicians are corrupt but we must vote for them. Hopefully, the ends can justify the means. Maybe they did in this film but hopefully they do in real life. Too bad the law doesn't rest with the will of the people though Willie likes to say that it does. Instead, men are conceived in sin and born in corruption another one of Willie's great lines. That is the more of the truth and that is the scary part. Grade: A
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