A Victim of Circumstance

This film was Preston Sturges's debut as a director and his screenplay for it won an Academy Award. Brian Donlevy stars as McGinty, a down-and-out loner who agrees to sell his vote to a corrupt political machine. In fact he sells it 37 times! His initiative catches the notice of the boss (Akim Tamiroff) and he soon has a job collecting protection money. McGinty quickly moves up the ladder of graft, becoming an alderman and then mayor. He seems to have no problem with the ethics of his situation and when the boss tells him he'll need a wife to win an election, he agrees to a marriage of convenience with his secretary.

The story is told in flash backs as McGinty tends bar in a south-of-the-border cantina. His listeners find his story of one-time greatness beyond belief. And we must patiently await the explanation of his fall from grace. But you won't be looking at your watch, this is a thoroughly entertaining film. Sturges deftly pokes fun at politics and society in general. And his famous knack for dialog keeps things at a lively pace.

In time McGinty grows to love his wife and they became wed in fact as well by law. He even treats her children from a previous marriage as his own. And she seems to respect him in spite of the corrupt nature of his political career. But eventually she begins to carefully plant the seeds of rebellion in him. She wonders aloud if there isn't something he can do for child laborers and the tenement dwellers. When the boss gets him elected governor, his wife tells him it's time to strike out on his own make himself into a real reformer. Though not persuaded by the morality of her argument, he does as she wishes out of devotion to her.

What is most interesting is that McGinty never goes through a cathartic conversion as one would expect from a Hollywood film. At the end of the film he seems to be of the same mind as at the beginning. He doesn't seem to be a bad person, he is actually very likeable. The immorality he exhibits seems to be just a reflection of the circumstances around him. Sturges was definitely a relativist and he makes that clear in all his screenplays. In his eyes the system, with all its hypocrisy and arbitrariness, leaves individuals with few choices and then judges them by self-serving standards.

There are many people who've never seen Sturges's films, but few who will forget them once they have. Somehow, at a time when Hollywood was making so many cliched look-alikes, he managed to establish and maintain a unique film style. In much the same way Robert Altman has more recently, Sturges played the role as social critic--something often lacking from our culture, though rarely from our politics.

-- Robert Stewart