State of the Union (1948)

Very well executed

Best movie of this year hands down!

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Maybe it's me, but I couldn't really like this film.Tracy and Hepburn are usually very watchable, and Tracy's performance here is good, if limited by the amount of work he has to do. I thought Hepburn was miscast and missed her usual repartee that we have seen in her other films.A personal dislike of mine is the sort of wise-cracking, cynical guy played by Van Johnson. Again, I normally enjoy his work, but this sort of character often employed in this type of film from the 40s and 50s (see Kip Lurie in "Adam's Rib") I find becomes very wearing very quickly.Angela Lansbury is and looks good in a role that foreshadows her role in "The Manchurian Candidate". She is a plus.I felt the plot was also pretty weak, tough it does show that nothing much has changed in US politics it seems.

[Warning: Proceed if you don't care about spoilers] Frank Capra's State of the Union is a startling peek into the world of politics in American civilization. It gives its viewers an amazing insight into what goes into political campaigns, and basically walks us through each step of the hurdle. The movie takes us on a journey that leads to a path to presidency, and it does it in so many levels with so many strong characters. The lead character is Grant Matthews who is a successful industrialist with high moral standards and principles. He is the aspiring Presidential candidate chosen by the conniving politician Jim Conover who is all too familiar with the political world. Alongside, we see the stern, bold character Kay Thorndyke who runs a newspaper inherited from her father, and is romantically involved with Grant Matthews. An important character present in the movie is Mary Matthews, wife of Grant Matthews, who knows her husband too well and is apprehensive about his decision to enter the political domain. The movie presents a dramatic eye-opener into the world of politics through the story of Grant Matthews who is put into the shoes of a Presidential candidate, and it is the account of how this incident affects the lives of each character in the movie.The movie is fast paced in terms of politics as the viewers are quick to dive into learning about the process of selecting the President of United States. The entire plot starts when power-hungry politician Jim Conover tags up with the newspaper magnate Kay Thorndyke to find someone who could represent the Presidential Nominee for the Republican Party. However, the movie is one-sided as we only get to see the Republican side of the story. The movie pictures Republicans as effective opportunists who exploit the general interests of the American people by abusing the political system to advance their intents and motives just to gain votes from the public. During a time when America needed a President, Jim Conover sees an opportunity when Kay Thorndyke presents Grant Matthews, who is a self-made man, an industrialist who made airplanes with only two years of high school, a friend of the labor industry and a man of high integrity. All of these factors made Grant Matthews a potential dark horse in the Republican Party, which would benefit Jim Conover and other republicans in countless ways. And thus Jim Conover initiates the relentless political campaigns to raise Grant Matthews to the top for reasons that were more beneficial to him and his political party than to the United States of America.The movie also sheds light on the symbiotic relationship that exists between the media and politics. In the movie, there are benefits to both the Republican Party and The Thorndyke Press if Grant Matthews becomes the President. The news of a dark horse emerging from the Republican Party coming through a particular press would skyrocket their market value and put them on the top of the press chain. So both parties, having much to gain, join forces and utilize every unit of their power to bolster the Grant Matthews as President campaign. This mutual relationship between the press and the political world is timeless as it is prevalently seen in the news even to this day. Various media outlets get to publish the latest scoops and earn a good reputation for themselves, and the political parties get to influence the public by giving the media their side of the story. The movie spectacularly displays the bitter truth of how the media and politicians have been joining forces to sway public opinion. The movie is very politically condensed as it packs a great deal of information to any viewer aspiring to learn about the American political system. It brings forth the harsh reality that you can't make everybody happy in a world where people have differing opinions and different ideologies about every little issue in our society. To put up with everybody and gain their approval, you have to pull some strings here and there. Politics requires a man to compromise his morale and ethics in order to climb up the political ladder. The movies shows how an honest man like Grant Matthews had to give up his ideals and lower his standards in order to enter the deceptively travestied world of politics.

This is my favorite Tracy-Hepburn film and one of my favorite Frank Capra films. I recommend reading Capra's out-of-print biography, "The Name Above the Title" for the interesting story of the reaction to this film by official Washington in 1948.Quite reminiscent of "Meet John Doe," the story tests the character of a man against the political power-brokers who want to use him for their own purposes. Ideals battle pragmatism in ways that still ring true 50+ years later.Angela Landsbury is a wicked woman (can we call her a fem fa tale?) in an amazing performance foreshadowing her role in 1962's "Manchurian Candidate." Adolphe Menjou's sleazy political boss is about a greasy as they come.All in all there is nothing like a Capra film to make me what to stick to my principles and listen to the people who really love me. Add to Capra's theme of the inherent wisdom of the people this first rate group of actors and you have two hours of time well spent.

This political comedy wasn't a success and consequently it isn't revived much. It's based on a play and it shows. It's made up of 'scenes' and with one exception, (some hi-jinks involving airplanes), it's set mostly in one or two rooms, (in one scene the actors keep entering and exiting through doors to the left and right of the screen as if in a play). In some respects it represents the very pinacle of Capra-corn but by the time it was made audiences had grown tired of this kind of liberal chest-thumping. (Had it been made fifteen years earlier it would probably have been a huge success). And yet it is very well played and highly enjoyable and, on at least one occasion, it seems to be ahead of it's time. Maybe Tracy's vision of the future was as unpalatable to the American public of the period as Adolphe Menjou suggests it would be in the film. But if one is going to get slapped up the face with political sentiments aren't they better to come from the liberal left? The climatic scene may be preposterous, (I can't believe anyone on the verge of being elected President is going to turn down the job because of his wife's liberal conscience. Don't these people think things through?), but at least it's preposterous in a gooey, rose-tinted and embarasingly sincere way without an ounce of cynicism.Of course, Capra picked the most liberal, grand-standing actors on the planet to portray the potential President and his wife when he chose Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and, of course, they're marvellous. They cut through all the goo and marshmallow stuff to get to the heart of their characters. You just wish at times they had better material to work with. As the unscroupulous, unfeeling newspaper woman with whom Tracy has been having an affair and who is doing all she can to put him into the White House, (and, therefore, vicariously herself), Angela Lansbury is terrific. She was still very young when she made this film but you would never know it and her performance here prefigures her work in "The Manchurian Candidate" some fourteen years later. And as Tracy's cynical young campaign manager, Van Johnson does the best acting of his career. In a just world both he and Lansbury would have been Oscar nominated.After the relative failure of this film, Capra's career began to wind down, (he only made four other films). Perhaps he felt that any change in direction at this stage would be a sell-out. At least he escaped with his integrity intact.