American Experience: FDR
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Movie Reviews of American Experience: FDR
Movie Review: One of the nation's greatest presidents
Summary: 4 Stars
The American Experience biography series is uneven, but when it's good it's REALLY good. This 4-hour documentary about FDR is really good.
The film explores FDR's patrician, Hudson Valley background, his lonely days at Groton, his less than stellar years at Harvard, and his early adulthood and marriage to cousin Eleanor, a time when he seems to have drifted without direction, and the ever-present influence of his mother Sarah (although the film soft-pedals the extent of her manipulativeness).
FDR seems to have found himself when he entered politics. He served an appreticeship as a NY state legislator, antagonising the political machine with his independence. He became assistant secretary of the navy, and rather churlishly did his best to undercut his very gracious and patient boss. He was a vice presidential candidate. FDR was a young man on the rise--and then polio struck.
The film points out that the several years of unsuccessful therapy and soul-searching made FDR a different man, one much more able to sympathize with the sufferings of others. (During this time, he also sunk a good deal of his personal fortune into the founding of a polio clinic at Hot Springs, Georgia). After regaining confidence and a certain amoung of mo mobility, he became the reform governor of NY and soon thereafter president.
Given the economic crisis that the world is currently going through--of which, I suspect, we've only seen the initial stages thus far--"FDR's" account of Roosevelt's struggle to do something about the Great Depression is especially interesting and timely. FDR, like so many of his patrician friends, had always thought that the market ought to correct itself without governmental "interference." But he soon dropped this notion--thereby enraging the oligarchs whose business practices had helped collapse the economy--and instigated New Deal programs in the form of the NRA--the National Recovery Administration.
One of the weaknesses of this otherwise good film is its failure to give any account of why the Supreme Court began to rule that the NRA programs were unconstitutional, an attitude that led to FDR's famous and unsuccessful efforts to change the Court's membership.
The final hour of the film focuses on FDR and WWII, and is particularly in its discussion of FDR's Lend Lease strategy for getting around a Congress which refused to aid the British in the early stages of war. FDR's friendship with Churchill is also explored.
The film contains lots of fascinating clips as well as very good interviews with members of FDR's administration (all of them quite ancient now, of course), one of his nephews, Churchill's daughter, and a bevy of FDR scholars, including Doris Kearns Godwin. Well worth watching.
Four and one-half stars.
Movie Review: FDR DVD
Summary: 4 Stars
I had a tape of this, but it's not playing back very well now. I got the DVD because it is so well done I know I will want to watch it again.