A nice message at the end, but whew, a long way to get there, with a lot of silliness in a film that's all over the place. The cast was very interesting to me - Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda, with Jack Carson and Joan Leslie (who would appear together again a year later in 'The Hard Way'), Eugene Pallette with that wonderful voice of his, and Hattie McDaniel besides. The script lets them down, and I have to say, seeing de Havilland and Leslie overplay the farcical aspects of their parts was tough too. At its heart, the film positions men, the 'male animal', as belonging to one of two tribes - intellectuals or brutes. Fonda plays a college professor in the former camp who is married to de Havilland, and then watches her fall for an old flame, Carson, who is a loud ex-jock with two things on his mind - football, and de Havilland. This is where the film is weak, because aside from some amusing little moments when Fonda gets drunk, this whole love triangle story is ridiculous. Carson plays his part just fine, but his character is annoying. Leslie is involved in a parallel love triangle in what is a forgettable performance.
Where the film redeems itself is in the subplot which forms the basis for its moral message. Fonda's character is teaching a class in English composition, and for one lecture, plans on reading a letter penned by anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti along with one from Lincoln and another from William Sherman. When word of that gets out in a campus paper article, the head of the board of regents (Pallette) tries to censor the paper and then shut Fonda down. For a while I really wondered where it was going, because sympathies are all with Pallette, including de Havilland's, which was alarming. Watching Pallette speak at a football rally, calling players out one by one, urging everyone to fight, all with a bonfire in the background made me think of a Fascist rally, though the reference is subtle. As Fonda and a colleague sit glumly through it, they're the ones who seem like dullards, and they're urged to stand up and cheer, not unlike forced nationalism. In the end Fonda does stand up for what's right and shows that being courageous can take a very different form than brawling or showing physical might. 'Americanism', as the film puts it, is shown to be a celebration of the freedom of thought and expression, which was of course so appropriate during WWII, and something we need regular reminders of. I love how the film for this and for honoring the intelligentsia, it's just too bad that the rest of it is so clumsily executed.
Where the film redeems itself is in the subplot which forms the basis for its moral message. Fonda's character is teaching a class in English composition, and for one lecture, plans on reading a letter penned by anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti along with one from Lincoln and another from William Sherman. When word of that gets out in a campus paper article, the head of the board of regents (Pallette) tries to censor the paper and then shut Fonda down. For a while I really wondered where it was going, because sympathies are all with Pallette, including de Havilland's, which was alarming. Watching Pallette speak at a football rally, calling players out one by one, urging everyone to fight, all with a bonfire in the background made me think of a Fascist rally, though the reference is subtle. As Fonda and a colleague sit glumly through it, they're the ones who seem like dullards, and they're urged to stand up and cheer, not unlike forced nationalism. In the end Fonda does stand up for what's right and shows that being courageous can take a very different form than brawling or showing physical might. 'Americanism', as the film puts it, is shown to be a celebration of the freedom of thought and expression, which was of course so appropriate during WWII, and something we need regular reminders of. I love how the film for this and for honoring the intelligentsia, it's just too bad that the rest of it is so clumsily executed.