Many commentators say this is a strange film. But you have to see it for yourself to understand just how strange it is. There is an interesting and even comical debate between modern viewers, who have their own political agendas to push, as to whether this movie might be seen as a precursor to The New Deal with a socialist penumbra, or an instructional guide from William Randolph Hearst on how to promote American fascism.
The premise of that debate is that there was a lot of difference between socialism and fascism at that time. But in truth it was an academic distinction. People often forget that the word "NAZI" does not stand for "fascism." NAZI is an abbreviation for the German words "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" which translates into English as "National Socialist Workers Party of Germany." One distinction between garden-variety socialism and German National Socialism was that under the former system, government owned the major means of production allegedly to benefit all, while under the Nazi variant there was some private ownership of industry but with so much government control it might as well have been state ownership.
Second-generation Fabian socialists in England in the 1930s might have talked about Communists as being on their "left" and fascists as being on their "right." But there is no reason for American advocates of freedom to indulge in that purely internal socialist semantic contraption regardless of how popular it may have been with simplistic historians and journalists who did not know any better. American Democrats and American Republicans should view all forms of totalitarianism, including Nazi Germany, as being variant strains of socialism on the far left side and beyond the American spectrum.
"Gabriel Over The White House," according to other comments, was produced in 1932 before the election and was released in 1933. If that is true, it is even more fascinating when seen as an "alternate 1933" to the New Deal. The Bonus March of May-July 1932 was very fresh in people's memory when theater audiences first saw this film that includes bonus marchers as one important element of the plot.
The president's demonstration of the force of air power over naval battleships is forward-looking for the time. But it is also presenting the views of Gen. Billy Mitchell who successfully bombed and sunk captured battleships from the air in a 1923 test and who was tried and convicted of insubordination at his court martial in 1925 for accusing his superiors of "criminal negligence" for neglecting the development of military airplanes.
The interesting depiction in the film of the president's ideas for putting bonus marchers to work on the public payroll was certainly adopted by FDR in creating the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps--both organized in a fashion similar to military service.
The scariest parts of the film that one could easily see as fascist propaganda include the military court martial for bootleg-financed gangsters and the president's confrontation with Congress as an elected branch that was acting too slow for his taste.
These parts may have been influenced by the crazy ideas of Hearst that unfortunately did not seem crazy enough to some demoralized business leaders at the time. The fascistic and/or socialistic propaganda elements of this film are even more interesting in view of the fact that Walter Huston also starred ten years later as Ambassador Joseph M. Davies in a pro-Soviet propaganda film called "Mission to Moscow."
In watching this film, I almost got the impression that I was seeing the political equivalent of the 1936 science fiction classic called "Things to Come" starring Raymond Massey. This Walter Huston film is not an alternate future but an alternate present for the audience of 1933 somewhat in the way that the TV show "The West Wing" was an alternate present reality for its viewers from 1999 to 2006. "Gabriel Over The White House" shows us a 1933 that could have happened but did not. Whether it was a pleasant fantasy or a nightmare for civil liberties is left a little ambiguous and that is why the film challenges the imagination of the viewer and befuddles political scientists.
The premise of that debate is that there was a lot of difference between socialism and fascism at that time. But in truth it was an academic distinction. People often forget that the word "NAZI" does not stand for "fascism." NAZI is an abbreviation for the German words "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" which translates into English as "National Socialist Workers Party of Germany." One distinction between garden-variety socialism and German National Socialism was that under the former system, government owned the major means of production allegedly to benefit all, while under the Nazi variant there was some private ownership of industry but with so much government control it might as well have been state ownership.
Second-generation Fabian socialists in England in the 1930s might have talked about Communists as being on their "left" and fascists as being on their "right." But there is no reason for American advocates of freedom to indulge in that purely internal socialist semantic contraption regardless of how popular it may have been with simplistic historians and journalists who did not know any better. American Democrats and American Republicans should view all forms of totalitarianism, including Nazi Germany, as being variant strains of socialism on the far left side and beyond the American spectrum.
"Gabriel Over The White House," according to other comments, was produced in 1932 before the election and was released in 1933. If that is true, it is even more fascinating when seen as an "alternate 1933" to the New Deal. The Bonus March of May-July 1932 was very fresh in people's memory when theater audiences first saw this film that includes bonus marchers as one important element of the plot.
The president's demonstration of the force of air power over naval battleships is forward-looking for the time. But it is also presenting the views of Gen. Billy Mitchell who successfully bombed and sunk captured battleships from the air in a 1923 test and who was tried and convicted of insubordination at his court martial in 1925 for accusing his superiors of "criminal negligence" for neglecting the development of military airplanes.
The interesting depiction in the film of the president's ideas for putting bonus marchers to work on the public payroll was certainly adopted by FDR in creating the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps--both organized in a fashion similar to military service.
The scariest parts of the film that one could easily see as fascist propaganda include the military court martial for bootleg-financed gangsters and the president's confrontation with Congress as an elected branch that was acting too slow for his taste.
These parts may have been influenced by the crazy ideas of Hearst that unfortunately did not seem crazy enough to some demoralized business leaders at the time. The fascistic and/or socialistic propaganda elements of this film are even more interesting in view of the fact that Walter Huston also starred ten years later as Ambassador Joseph M. Davies in a pro-Soviet propaganda film called "Mission to Moscow."
In watching this film, I almost got the impression that I was seeing the political equivalent of the 1936 science fiction classic called "Things to Come" starring Raymond Massey. This Walter Huston film is not an alternate future but an alternate present for the audience of 1933 somewhat in the way that the TV show "The West Wing" was an alternate present reality for its viewers from 1999 to 2006. "Gabriel Over The White House" shows us a 1933 that could have happened but did not. Whether it was a pleasant fantasy or a nightmare for civil liberties is left a little ambiguous and that is why the film challenges the imagination of the viewer and befuddles political scientists.