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Native perils, somber inquiries. Death of a patriot, waves of mournful idolatry for a potential new Lincoln, the reporter haunted by fascism in Europe (Spencer Tracy) is on the case. An inspirational profile "to lean on in the dark days ahead," a cagey gallery for a hallowed void. The secretary (Richard Whorf) pushes the official story, the gatekeeper (Howard da Silva) hints at bitterness, the doctor (Frank Craven) diagnoses "hero fever." Nursing her own secrets, the widow (Katharine Hepburn) understands the gulf between public spaces and private lives: "I had to destroy the man to save the image." The war within, homegrown dictators in shadowy mansions, just the mood for George Cukor to develop the paranoid technique later perfected in Gaslight. The vacant center is a leader who strayed, creator of movements and planner of coups. "They didn't call it fascism. Painted it red, white and blue, and called it Americanism." Flags can be veils for nations where hatred is ready to be stoked, letters burning in a fireplace dissolve to canned applause from a speech on the turntable. Personages on the margins enliven the gloom—Audrey Christie's vinegar as Tracy's fellow snoop, Percy Kilbride's gum-chewing drawl as a wry cabbie, Margaret Wycherly's Gothic turn as the addled matriarch communicating with thunder. "You don't fall in love with a god, you just worship." Hitchcock runs parallel, Saboteur is concurrent with moneyed fifth columnists, Shadow of a Doubt has the beast's honored funeral. The noble lie is rejected by democracy's public servant, who goes on to replace one idol with another. "It's a pity how easily people can be fooled." Cukor analyzes a different structuring absence in the postwar view of Edward, My Son. With Forrest Tucker, Stephen McNally, Darryl Hickman, Donald Meek, and William Newell. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |