Preston Sturges gave us of the most cleverly crooked film openings and one of the most cleverly crooked endings of all time.
For the ending, see "Palm Beach Story;" I'll say no more. For the opening, see this.
I envy anyone who gets to see "The Great McGinty" with no idea what it's about. It starts out as the story of a hapless banker on the lam and a cute barfly who takes pity on him. Just when you are getting to know the pair enough to be interested in them, Sturges swings you into a tale told by a wisecracking bartender (Brian Donlevy) with a past. This brings you into the actual story, which leaves the banker and the dame on the sidelines for the rest of the film, listening to the bartender with glazed expressions of disinterest.
This bartender, McGinty, used to be somebody, rising from the ranks of a crooked political machine to become a mayor and, eventually, governor of a state which is unnamed but, with mention of a lakefront and "Big Wind," seems to have been Illinois. As a crooked politician, McGinty was great indeed, but as the opening titles tell us, lost it all in "one crazy minute" when he decided to play it straight. That'll learn him, as Sturges regular William Demarest would say.
As Sturges films go, "The Great McGinty" isn't great. It is quite good, with its clever framing structure and its gently subversive take on American politics. It won Sturges his only Oscar (a year before Orson Welles won his in the same category, for a similarly satiric take on American politics with a clever framing structure) but it's something short of a classic. Donlevy's central performance lacks warmth and the various characters around him are too broad and cartoony, except for Akim Tamiroff's "Boss" character, which ironically was made into an iconic cartoon character years later on "Bullwinkle."
There is much to like in this movie. Sturges fills the frame with subtle jokes throughout, whether it be the crazy cocktails we see McGinty serving at the beginning (something called a "Maiden's Prayer" apparently involves two squeezed lemons, egg yolk, Tabasco juice, and fruit garnishes) or the use of an Abe Lincoln desk bust as a weapon. Tamiroff warns McGinty about the perils of being led by a woman with the line: "Did you never hear of Samson and Delilah, or Sodom and Gomorrah?"
"McGinty" suffers for being a bit too serious in places for prime Sturges, and a female lead (Muriel Angelus) who plays her role too straight. You need her and her cutesy kids to justify McGinty's road to "ruin," but the less you see of them, the better "McGinty" works as a comedy. Unfortunately, they are in a lot of the film. Sturges would never lose his love for overly broad characters (overusing Demarest for example, though he's fine here), but he did make his movies play faster and lighter over time.
The politics here are barbed but not ideological in their delivery. When he is told about shoddy tenement housing, McGinty points out: "Give them a bathtub, they put coal in it." The corrupt political system McGinty comes to blows with involves both sweatshop labor (a point for the left) and needless public works projects (a point for the right.) Perhaps the lack of banner-waving made "McGinty" more palatable to the studio system than something like "Modern Times."
Some risqué bits sneak past, too. The Boss tells McGinty a husband and wife go together like "a pig and a poke." McGinty also shacks up with a woman, though the lines are blurred here because he's already married to her (out of political convenience though, not, at first, love.)
One great thing about "McGinty": It moves fast, just 81 minutes to tell a lot of story. Sturges would move even faster telling more complex stories in his later films, but he was off to a fine start.
For the ending, see "Palm Beach Story;" I'll say no more. For the opening, see this.
I envy anyone who gets to see "The Great McGinty" with no idea what it's about. It starts out as the story of a hapless banker on the lam and a cute barfly who takes pity on him. Just when you are getting to know the pair enough to be interested in them, Sturges swings you into a tale told by a wisecracking bartender (Brian Donlevy) with a past. This brings you into the actual story, which leaves the banker and the dame on the sidelines for the rest of the film, listening to the bartender with glazed expressions of disinterest.
This bartender, McGinty, used to be somebody, rising from the ranks of a crooked political machine to become a mayor and, eventually, governor of a state which is unnamed but, with mention of a lakefront and "Big Wind," seems to have been Illinois. As a crooked politician, McGinty was great indeed, but as the opening titles tell us, lost it all in "one crazy minute" when he decided to play it straight. That'll learn him, as Sturges regular William Demarest would say.
As Sturges films go, "The Great McGinty" isn't great. It is quite good, with its clever framing structure and its gently subversive take on American politics. It won Sturges his only Oscar (a year before Orson Welles won his in the same category, for a similarly satiric take on American politics with a clever framing structure) but it's something short of a classic. Donlevy's central performance lacks warmth and the various characters around him are too broad and cartoony, except for Akim Tamiroff's "Boss" character, which ironically was made into an iconic cartoon character years later on "Bullwinkle."
There is much to like in this movie. Sturges fills the frame with subtle jokes throughout, whether it be the crazy cocktails we see McGinty serving at the beginning (something called a "Maiden's Prayer" apparently involves two squeezed lemons, egg yolk, Tabasco juice, and fruit garnishes) or the use of an Abe Lincoln desk bust as a weapon. Tamiroff warns McGinty about the perils of being led by a woman with the line: "Did you never hear of Samson and Delilah, or Sodom and Gomorrah?"
"McGinty" suffers for being a bit too serious in places for prime Sturges, and a female lead (Muriel Angelus) who plays her role too straight. You need her and her cutesy kids to justify McGinty's road to "ruin," but the less you see of them, the better "McGinty" works as a comedy. Unfortunately, they are in a lot of the film. Sturges would never lose his love for overly broad characters (overusing Demarest for example, though he's fine here), but he did make his movies play faster and lighter over time.
The politics here are barbed but not ideological in their delivery. When he is told about shoddy tenement housing, McGinty points out: "Give them a bathtub, they put coal in it." The corrupt political system McGinty comes to blows with involves both sweatshop labor (a point for the left) and needless public works projects (a point for the right.) Perhaps the lack of banner-waving made "McGinty" more palatable to the studio system than something like "Modern Times."
Some risqué bits sneak past, too. The Boss tells McGinty a husband and wife go together like "a pig and a poke." McGinty also shacks up with a woman, though the lines are blurred here because he's already married to her (out of political convenience though, not, at first, love.)
One great thing about "McGinty": It moves fast, just 81 minutes to tell a lot of story. Sturges would move even faster telling more complex stories in his later films, but he was off to a fine start.