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7 Days in May; 1964 Film is Timely Today
Topic Started: Feb 9 2010, 01:08 PM (234 Views)
Acc Esq

I caught this by accident last night on AMC while channel surfing. Interesting film from 1964 featuring Fredric March, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. I do not recall ever seeing it. The plot is chillingly prescient. (Rod Serling wrote the screenplay). A weak appeaser is elected president and he has a supermajority in the senate. They ram through an extremely unpopular disarmament treaty with USSR early in his term and there is huge backlash and disapproval among the electorate. The Joint Chiefs conclude that the treaty is an act of treason and plan a miltary coup to save the country because there are years left in the president's term. Of course, it is ultimately foiled in a victorious lesson of civics, democracy and constitutional principles. The presidential character resembles (presages?) Jimmy Carter.

It was an enjoyable movie standing alone. With contemporary relevance, I thought it was even better. I commend it to readers.

Acc, the new movie critic.
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kbp

I've always liked it, and Turner Classic Movies is my favorite channel (which is what it was on here). Fredric March palys a great scene when he confronts Lancaster about the coup. So well that he brings the point home even with conservatives.

If you ever wish to review old (or new) movies, imdb dot com is the best source. I just paste the movie title in the Phrase line (or "" marks) and IMDB in the word line of a google.
Edited by kbp, Feb 9 2010, 10:43 PM.
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abb
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I caught that movie, too. Had seen it before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
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foxglove

7 Days in May has contempory relevance but according to the wiki entry, it may have been based on General LeMay's disagreement with JFK about the Bay of Pigs, etc. So the movie also could have been inspired not by any futurist thinking but by what had happened in the past.

A movie about politics that seemed to be future-oriented was Frank Capra's, "State of the Union", made in 1948. I saw it for the first time a month or two ago and was surprised that the main character, the Spencer Tracy character, who was running for President advocated a one world government with a world currency. That sounds like the New World Order.

The owner of a newspaper chain basically selected the Presidential candidate because she thought a dark horse candidate could win. She was also having an affair with him so she would have "access" to him, one would assume. She set about to do all she could do to put him in office and since she had money, knowledge, connections and the power of her newspaper she was well on the way of getting him elected. The owner of the newspaper had inherited it from her father. (I thought of Katherine Graham and her father who started The Washington Post). The movie shows the behind-the-scenes political maneuvers and finally the candidate, with the help of his wife, gets disgusted with the whole scene and quits the race.

One of the political consultants in State of the Union is a woman who sometimes dressed like a man which I saw as a foreshadowing of the gender issues political types to come.

Edited by foxglove, Feb 10 2010, 12:18 PM.
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kbp

I've seen that many times, a good one to watch.

I always sensed that Spencer Tracy was very liberal, or worse, but I have no record of it outside of his films. His staying married while estranged from his wife conflicts a bit with that, in my mind anyway.
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Acc Esq

I don't believe the theme of either film intentionally set out to forecast the political future. I am fascinated, however, by their messages and plots in today's political environment.

Notice that both films also have the same endings -- a vindication of the system.
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Quasimodo

Try "Meet John Doe", and then think of the Tea Party movement.

(Wikipedia summary) :

Infuriated at being laid off from her job as a newspaper columnist from The New Bulletin, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) prints a fake letter from the unemployed "John Doe," threatening suicide in protest of society's ills. When the note causes a sensation, the newspaper is forced to rehire Mitchell. After reviewing a number of derelicts who have shown up at the paper claiming to have penned the original suicide letter, Ann and Henry Connell (James Gleason) decide to hire John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a former baseball player and tramp who is in need of money to repair his injured arm, to play John Doe.

The Doe philosophy spreads across the country, developing into a political movement, with financial support from the newspaper's publisher, D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold), who plans to channel the support for Doe into support for his own political ambitions.

When Willoughby, who has come to believe in the Doe philosophy himself, realizes that he is being used, he tries to expose the plot, but is stymied in his attempts to talk to a nationwide radio audience at a rally, and then exposed as a fake by Norton (who claims to have been deceived, like everyone else, by the staff of the newspaper). Frustrated by his failure, Willoughby intends to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the City Hall on Christmas Eve, as in the original John Doe letter. Only the intervention of Mitchell and followers of the John Doe clubs persuades him to renege on his threat to kill himself. At this point in the movie, a reference to Jesus Christ is made, that a historical "John Doe" has already died for the sake of humanity. The film ends with Connell turning to Norton and saying, "There you are, Norton! The people! Try and lick that!"

Edited by Quasimodo, Feb 10 2010, 10:34 AM.
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Quasimodo

(Hindi spin-off movie; Wikipedia entry) :

Main Azaad Hoon

Main Azaad Hoon is a 1989 Hindi movie, said to be inspired by Meet John Doe. The film was written by Javed Akhtar, directed by Tinnu Anand, and starred Amitabh Bachchan and Shabana Azmi.

summary:

The movie begins with a female journalist named Subhashini (Shabana Azmi) working for a daily newspaper and mostly in controversy due to her bold and open mouthed articles against corrupt politicians.

Afer a change in the ownership of the newspaper, she realizes that she stands to lose her job along with many others, especially who are not likely to subscribe to the new management's policies. In a fit of anger she pens her column with printing a fictitious letter, supposedly written to her by someone named Azaad, ad verbatim. This letter openly criticises a cross-section of media and the establishment vocalising certain unacknowledged and uncomfortable facts. The letter also says that the author of the letter would commit suicide from a high-rise building on (26th January), the (Republic Day of India), if certain conditions are not met with.

Serependipitiously, the new owner, Seth Gokulchand (Manohar Singh), senses in this a fertile scheme to promote his newspaper and forms an alliance with Subhashini to establish her column in the name of Azaad and write about the ills of present society and administration. They actually intend this as a gimmick to increase the sales of the newspaper. The task for them now is to find a face and character for Azaad, should the question arise about the real identity of the author of the column and the letter.

She is desperately looking for some way to wake up the corrupt and lazy politicians to work for the betterment of country. One day she come across a job less youth Azad (Amitabh Bachchan) who has come down to Rajnagar in search of job. Azad is very innocent of all political games and media. Asha offers him a job and Azad accept it without knowing his actual duties. Then Asha makes him a nationwide hero through her articles writing him as a future of country who stands against the corrupt governance though Azad is kept in dark.

Later he learns through the media that he has been used however he decides to sacrifice for nation and he also falls for Asha. Azad becomes a leader of masses and corrupt politicians challenge him the prove his love for people and nation, he jumps from a 30 storey under construction building to prove that and dies.
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