For myself, I basically agree with your assessment of THE FBI STORY, Thomas; it is badly structured and unimaginatively treated, with that persistent, annoying switch back and forth between idealized home life and exciting case-cracking. (I guess you could say it's Veering Miles from one to another.) Somewhere on another thread I quoted the NY Times's DVD reviewer when the disc came out the other year, who liked it in a perverse sort of way, referring to it as "'Father Knows Best' with machine guns." (I don't know if you're familiar with that 1950s family TV program, Thomas, which starred Robert Young and was an enjoyable blend of light comedy and solid but unobtrusive family values -- the first season, 1955-56, just came out on DVD the other week. But Gary, you know what I'm talking about. Loved that show!)
Anyway, the reviewer's description is pretty apt -- I thought it hilarious. What I find especially irksome is the air of smug moral superiority the film assumes, with the Hardestys a bunch of heavy-handed moralists, this dragging God and the Bible into every family crisis, Chip looking down his nose at Dave Crandell (Sam's son) when he has doubts about his suitability to the Bureau, all that. It's too pious and syrupy and self-consciously morally oppressive, and if there's one thing I've learned it's to beware the person who too loudly protests his own piety.
Yet -- this is why this movie is so enjoyable! It's too pious for its own good, too inaccurate too often to stand scrutiny, too sappy to escape becoming camp, too overdone and with too many anvil-like subtlties NOT to be wonderful!
Of course, taken as straight stuff, this is what J. Edgar himself wanted people to believe. A gay, unmarried, misogynist, image-consumed, self-aggrandizing, blackmailing bureaucrat protecting his turf through intimidation and his "private files", conjuring this image of a squeaky-clean, moral, upright, infallible department of honest, fair, single-minded agents relentless in the pursuit of wrong-doers, family men all, church-goers all, accountants and lawyers all (not true, by the way) -- basically, men (not, emphatically, women, except in clerical capacities) who were everything Edgar himself was not. Not to draw a lurid analogy, but it's not unlike the difference between the idealized, and idolized, Aryan Superman of the Nazis, vs. the dumpy, pasty-faced, psychopath with bad teeth and breath, that Hitler really was.
Mervyn LeRoy was a close friend of the Director's and that's why he made the film and of course got the Bureau's cooperation. But the film's uncritical overview isn't merely a sop to Hoover; it's how LeRoy, and many if not most Americans, felt at the time. The thing is, there was a measure of truth to this two-dimensional, oversimplified portrayal, just as the dark underside of the Bureau, and the myths that grew up about it (some depicted in the movie), is also a part, but not the whole, truth of the FBI's history. Human affairs are never so neat and black-and-white.
Fact is, Hoover did a tremendous job in organizing the FBI and making it an effective crime-fighting force, and most of what it's done in its existence is commendable and was of vital importance to the United States. And most of the people who worked for it were indeed honest men earnest about their duties. But there was also deceit, bad agents, botched investigations, misuse of the Bureau's law enforcement powers, a cult of personality around Hoover, all the rest. Crtitcs can't admit to the good side any more than supporters can admit to the bad. Too bad only a few of us rational people remain to try to fairly judge without grinding an ideologial ax!
By the way, while it's true that the shot of JEH stepping up and arresting Karpis is done in silhouette (like Jesus in BEN-HUR, seen only from the back, staring down the Roman guard who had yelled, "No water for him!" regarding Judah's request for refreshment), it's also true that the actor "portraying" Edgar in that shot is plainly terribly miscast -- the voice sounds absolutely NOTHING like Hoover's, and even the shadow looks phony. (And, of course, Hoover didn't arrest Karpis personally -- he hid in his car until the real agents sprang on and cuffed the K-man, and only then leapt out shouting, "You're under arrest!")
BUT -- you do see the real JEH, and his lifelong assistant/boyfriend Clyde W. Tolson, in the silent scene shot in Hoover's actual office, after the opening credits, when Hoover is personally going over the plane bomber's (Jack Graham: who was clearly crackers) file -- something I doubt he really did, but it looked like he was on top of things. The camera work there makes me laugh -- as it reverently pulls slowly away from The Desk, like an awed communicant solemnly withdrawing from the presence of the Pope. But that's the real guy -- guys. And by the way, the two men can be seen in a virtually identical set-up shot in THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET, the excellent 1945 film about cracking a Nazi spy ring in the US. There's the same basic shot of Clyde hovering (hoovering?) alongside a seated Edgar, ostensibly going over some report, except they're 14 years younger and in black and white. I expect as soon as the film crew left Tolson made right for Hoover's fly, but that's another issue.
Final note...when LeRoy screened the movie for Hoover prior to its release (J. Edgar had veto rights over the content), Hoover arose after the film ended and the lights came on, and, with tears in his eyes, declared it was "Perfect -- just perfect!" A sob from a S.O.B. Again, not to make a lurid comparison with another murderous dictator, but when they screened the WWII Soviet epic THE FALL OF BERLIN for Stalin in 1949, everyone in attendance of course was waiting with trembling fear to gauge his reaction -- as he could inflict a vastly more final retribution on those who displeased him than ever could Edgar Hoover. The lights came on in the Kremlin screening room, there was silence for a few moments, and then that old monster rose, turned to the director, and, with tears in HIS eyes, sobbed "That is how it should have been!", referring to the film's fictitious depiciton of Stalin flying into postwar Berlin with throngs of cheering thousands greeting him as the savior of peace. (Actually, he was terrified of flying and skulked in secretly aboard his train.) He then took the director's and actors' hands in his and wept at the beauty of their production. I speak Russian, but frankly don't know the word for "Phew!" But interesting about the common reactions, isn't it?
Oh -- I'll bet in the new BARD, Michael Douglas learns of the guy's scheme but then evilly decides to bury the exonerating evidence and deliberately execute an innocent man, just to shut up someone he doesn't like. Now that'd be a cool plot. Something of which Stalin and Hitler would have heartily approved, and J. Edgar at least have understood, as he torched the exculpating file and went off to the racetrack with Clyde.
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