A Fourth Of July Salute To Patriotic Movies

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2000 by Wes D. Gehring

Cinematic depictions during the 1960s of earlier conflicts included John Wayne's debut as the director (with uncredited assistance from Ford) of the epic "The Alamo" (1960), with Wayne also starting as Davy Crockett. Before Italian director Sergio Leone's anti-establishment "spaghetti westerns" changed audience expectations for the genre in the mid 1960s, the traditional horse opera was still being made at the onset of the decade. This was best demonstrated by the blockbuster American event, "How the West Was Won" (1962), whose all-star cast included Wayne, Fonda, and Stewart, with narration by Tracy. (Ford directed the Civil War sequence.)

In the world of patriotic biographies made in the first half of the 1960s, it was largely a Roosevelt story. For example, Dore Schary adapted his acclaimed play to the screen in "Sunrise at Campabello" (1960), with Ralph Bellamy re-creating his Tony-winning stage performance as FDR, heroically battling through both polio and politics. In 1965, "The Eleanor Roosevelt Story" won an Oscar as the best feature-length documentary. This inspiring account of the former First Lady also broke new ground by making several top-10 lists, territory normally reserved for fiction films.

Reclaiming American pride

Patriotic movies during the second half of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s were relatively rare, as Vietnam and Watergate did much to drain American pride. Still, there were some memorable exceptions. In 1970, a year that produced such watershed antiwar pictures as "M*A*S*H" and "Catch-22," George C. Scott gave the performance of a lifetime in "Patton," his portrayal of the complex patriotic American warrior. This milestone biography is mesmerizing from film frame one, when Scott as Gen. George Patton gives the ultimate battle pep talk in front of a huge American flag. Despite the period's antiwar climate, the critical and commercial success of "Patton" should not be seen as a total surprise since the politics of World War II sometimes put limitations on the controversial general's ability to wage war. After all, part of the frustration centering on Vietnam, at least from the conservative right, was that politics limited the U.S.'s war-making abilities in Southeast Asia.

Fittingly, two additional patriotic movies from the period opened in 1976--the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence: "Rocky" and "All the President's Men." As a footnote to the latter picture, Robert Redford's involvement as both actor and executive producer foreshadowed a proclivity for his future involvement in other Capra-like populist films. "All the President's Men" lost the best picture Oscar to "Rocky," a fact which now seems surprising because Sylvester Stallone subsequently went to the "Rocky" well too many times (five installments), but the original was fundamental sports populism at its best.

Rocky Balboa was the classic American underdog, topped off by his being from the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence--Philadelphia. The only one of the sequels to rival the patriotism of the original was "Rocky IV" (1985), wherein Stallone's aging boxer battles a Soviet fighter and capitalizes on Pres. Ronald Reagan's U.S. vs. U.S.S.R. Cold War brinkmanship. One might best close the decade out with the Capraesque populist comedy "The Electric Horseman"(1979), which, among its many charms, includes a scene where Redford and Jane "antiwar activist" Fonda are engaged in singing "America" (with "purple mountains' majesty" in the background).