Has anyone seen this movie?

The film has been severely overlooked for many years. I feel that it is Kate and Spence at their very best. She never looked better and the sets are awesome. Hollywood just doesn't make them anymore like they use to. Too bad

I DVRed this when TCM showed this recently. I had never seen it. The scene near the end where the truth about Forrest is explained was incredible. I think he didn't actually have ties to Hitler but was using Fascism as a model for a New America.

I'd really like to have a transcript of that scene. If I can't find one online then I'll transcribe it myself.

It seems to me the "Forrest plan" has been enacted in the USA, repeatedly.




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Just saw it. Hepburn and Tracy are perfectly fine in the film, which reminds one in part of "Citizen Kane" with its unraveling of a "great man's" past, and the huge Gothic house, etc. There is some intelligent dialogue, the sets are stunning, the camera work superior, but...the ending is hysteric, blunt, and didactic, ruining what could have been a much better psychological bit of cinema. A disappointment finally despite all its apparent virtues. The manner in which a very compelling piece of suspense is blown is a disaster.

I think it's a remarkable movie for 1942. The comparison with Citizen Kane is interesting, but I always thought Forrest was at least a little bit inspired by Charles Lindbergh.

I just finished watching it. I had never heard of it before. The beginning of the "mystery" story reminded me of Citizen Kane.

X

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Nothing to contribute to this already interesting discussion, but wanted to let you all know the film is finally being released on DVD by Warners on April 12th, 2011. It and "The Sea of Grass" (also new to DVD) will also be part of the 10-disc box set, "Tracy and Hepburn - The Definitive Collection" containing all the Tracy/Hepburn films. In addition to their nine films it'll also contain the documentary "The Spencer Tracy Legacy". This will be a joint effort from Warners, Sony and Fox, similar to the combined effort to release "The Elia Kazan Collection" last year.

This film was a thought experiment reflecting on unspoken assumptions and questions in the nation's reaction to what was happening in Germany at the time: What if America had a Hitler? Could it happen here? How might it happen? Could someone who is a sufficiently charismatic speaker spellbind this nation with patriotic idealism and then lead it down an ugly murderous path? The story structure the film takes, with a reporter covering the figure's untimely death, which occurs at what would have been a pivotal moment in his ascent, is a device that allows a widening circle of truth to be revealed about this figure throughout the course of the film; the reporter is meant to be the audience's surrogate within the film, leading us through a transition of feelings of first admiration, then discomfort and ultimately horror for the absent figure.
The movie cheats a little bit on the experiment: the ugly side of the Hitler character in the movie is revealed as a secret plot to be implemented after his rise to power. The real Hitler was quite upfront and open about his race hatred and warlike intentions from the beginning and rose to power anyway. Was this discrepancy written in because the makers of the film thought this a genuine distinction in American vs. German culture: that a completely parallel series of events could not actually happen here? Or because they feared the American audience would reject such a portrayal of themselves? Or was it to give the story the elements of mystery and suspense?