I didn’t like All the King’s Men but I don’t think I can properly judge it given the long span of time since it was made. The best picture winner for 1949 means that it has had more than 50 years to be referenced and paid homage to in dozens of other movies and tv shows I’ve seen in my life. Watching movies that are famous for one reason or another (either because they are an award winner or they are a cult classic) long after their initial popularity, has made me realize just how much in cinema is not original. Not that I didn’t know it before, but just how much popular cinema borrows from what came before makes it tough to watch the original source material.
I felt I’d seen this story before… small town man tries to better himself to right some injustice and becomes corrupted by power and becomes what he was fighting against in the first place, all the while tormenting his family and being bolstered by the support of the “people” who are just ignorant masses.
It is an ageless story, but this was probably one of the first big screen takes on it. The movie just felt small. The stagings felt a lot more like a play at times, which is more classic Hollywood. In the end… been there done that.
But despite me not really loving this interpretation of the story, I still don’t think it should have been remade last year with an “all-star” cast. I know Hollywood loves to revisit the well, but shouldn’t there be an unspoken rule that once a movie wins a Best Picture Oscar its retired, like a jersey number, never to be used again?
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