Inherit the Wind
by Stanley Kramer
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dick York, Donna Anderson, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Spencer TracyDirector: Stanley Kramer
Cinematographer: Ernest Laszlo
Producer: Stanley Kramer
Editor: Frederic Knudtson
Writer: Harold Jacob Smith
Writer: Jerome Lawrence
Writer: Nedrick Young
Writer: Robert E. Lee
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-11
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: United Artists
Movie Reviews of Inherit the Wind
Movie Review: Dishonest and Disrespectful
Summary: 1 Stars
I did a little research on this movie and turned up some unpleasant truths: About once a decade, an "anti-religion propaganda film" comes out of Hollywood. I can name three of them and this is one. Really, if such a movie targeted blacks or gays or Muslims, it would arouse an outcry, and it should. This movie, produced by an atheist Christian-hater, is simply a thinly disguised attack on Christians. A teacher who shows this to his class is perpetuating this prejudice. The film does everything it can to portray southern American Christians as hateful, bigoted, intolerant, narrow-minded, ignorant, anti-scientific, and utterly unsophisticated. But, isn't such a hateful portrayal itself bigoted, hateful, & intolerant? Is such an image REALLY accurate about ANYONE? Here in Canada we are taught not to tolerate religious bigotry any more than racial bigotry. Anyway, "hate & mockery" truly describe the spirit of this film - it is so extreme, it is almost unique in this way. As for its content:
The film is technically fine - a courtroom drama. But unfortunately, it is not faithful to the facts of the trial; in fact, the whole picture is essentially a lie. For instance, no one arrested Scopes, the whole trial was initiated by the ACLU in order to overturn a penaltyless anti-evolution law. The ACLU convinced Scopes to play this role and even the prosecution cooperated as a test case. Scopes was not poor and defenseless either, a whole team of lawyers and scientists was brought from NYC by the ACLU. Thus, it wasn't really a normal trial - this is why the defense freely admitted Scopes "guilt". Scopes himself hadn't even taught evolution, the "defense" attorneys had coached the children three months later to say he had (read perjury). What Scopes had done is teach from a book which did teach evolution (the same textbook also declared evolution proved whites were superior to other races, by the way). Anyway, Scopes himself said in his autobiography that he was treated very well by everyone in town. As for the angry fundamentalist preacher and the violent lynch-mob, these were complete fiction - a straw man falsely representing only what the filmmaker WANTED to envision - in short, a lie. And...
It was Darrow, not Bryant, who was cited for contempt for his rudeness. Darrow was an avowed atheist who admitted in his own autobiography that his real goal for the case was to attack what he called "fundamentalists". In fact, the last day of the trial this man broke his word by refusing to testify. By contrast, Bryant, Darrow's opponent, was no intolerant, ignorant buffoon, as he is portrayed in the film - Bryant was chosen as the democratic candidate for president three times and was Wilson's Secretary of State. And the scientists? Darrow wouldn't even let them testify because he knew what Bryant could do to them on the stand! The whole movie deliberately twists the facts much like a Nazi or Soviet styled propaganda film. This movie is simply a deliberate slander: it has nothing to do with science - it was designed to slander Bible believers. Think about what you are really doing before you embrace this film. Using this film in a science class does not teach science; rather, it trains children to despise Christians.
There are few films I'd actually condemn - this is one of about ten. And by the way, before you mock creationists, intelligent design proponents, religious people, or atheists, be intellectually honest by taking a couple of hours to hear the specifics of what your opponents are saying; have you ever even heard what they have to say? Have you? Use science to carry on this controversy - not ridicule. Ridiculing others, as the filmmaker has so eagerly done, is just plain wrong.
Summary of Inherit the Wind
Two-time Best Actor Oscar?(r) winners* Spencer Tracy and Fredric March go toe-to-toe in this thrilling re-creation of the most titanic courtroom battle of the century. Garnering four Academy Award?(r) nominations**, including Best Actor (Tracy), and featuring Gene Kelly in a rare, critically-acclaimed dramatic role, Inherit the Wind is powerful, provocative cinema and "a heaping measure of entertainment" (The Hollywood Reporter)! The controversial subject of evolution versus creation causes two polar opposites to engage in one explosive battle of beliefs. Attorney Clarence Darrow (Tracy) faces off against fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan (March) in a small Tennessee town where a teacher has been brought to trial for teaching Darwinism. Let the trial begin...and watch the sparks fly!Two of the juiciest roles in the American theater fall at the feet of Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, and both men make a meal of it. Inherit the Wind, based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is a slightly fictionalized account of the Scopes Monkey Trial, that galvanizing legal drama of the 1920s. When a young Tennessee teacher is prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution in a public school, he receives unwanted public attention as well as the legal advice of a giant. Tracy plays the role based on Clarence Darrow, the eloquent defense attorney, and March storms his way through a part based on Williams Jennings Bryan, the failed presidential candidate (and famed orator) who prosecuted the case. Gene Kelly plays a character based on the acid-penned H.L. Mencken, reporting on the trial and caustically commenting on the absurdity of the human animal. Stanley (Judgment at Nuremberg) Kramer's direction is not especially subtle, but the verbal fireworks unleashed during the trial sequences are still stirring. Even the different styles of the actors are intriguing: March is all mannerism and false padding around the belly, while Tracy does his patented naturalistic grumbling. It would be nice if this story were a quaint period piece, but its issues and arguments keep reemerging in the headlines with each new generation. --Robert Horton
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