Retro Television Review: 3 By Cheever 1.2 “O Youth And Beauty!” (dir by Jeff Bleckner)

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing 3 By Cheever, which ran on PBS in 1979. The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube.

Episode 1.2 “O Youth and Beauty!”

(Dir by Jeff Bleckner, originally aired on October 31st, 1979)

Back in the day, Cash Bentley (Michael Murphy) was an athletic marvel. He was a track star who could jump the hurdles with ease and who everyone in high school looked up to. Now, however, he’s 40 years old and he feels lost. He’s aging and a new generation of young people have come along. They certainly have no idea who Cash Bentley used to be.

At drunken neighborhood parties, Cash insists on recreating his youth by having his hosts set up their furniture like an obstacle course. Giving them a starter’s pistol that he insists be fired to signify the start of the race, Cash will run through the house, jumping over chairs and couches and tables while everyone cheers. Unfortunately, Cash’s luck runs out and he ends up breaking his leg during one of his demonstrations.

Forced to get around on crutches, Cash feels isolated from the rest of the world. He doesn’t get a promotion because his bosses say they need someone who can start traveling immediately. When all of his neighbors get on the train that is heading into the city at the usual morning time, a hobbled Cash arrives late and is forced to wait alone for the next one. His wife, Louise (Kathryn Walker), gets a job working at a boutique to help pay the bills. She says that maybe she’ll make enough that they’ll be able to take a vacation. At the neighborhood parties, no one wants to deal with Cash and his broken leg. His athleticism was all he had left. It was what he was known for. It was the source of all his confidence. Now that he doesn’t have that, he’s lost.

Eventually, his legs comes out of the cast and he insists that Louise set up all the furniture in the house so that he can run another obstacle race. He gives Louise the starter’s pistol and insists that she fire it when it’s time for him to start. The scene cuts to the outside of their suburban home. The sound of one gunshot upsets the calm. Later, Louise and her children are seen moving out of the house. Cash is nowhere to be seen.

The episode ends ambiguously. Those who are familiar with the original John Cheever short story know that Louise shot Cash and that no one was sure whether she meant to do it or not. The movie cuts away before the gun is actually fired. For all we know, Cash did the obstacle course and then just never returned home.

O Youth and Beauty is one of John Cheever’s most acclaimed short stories. The screen adaptation features an excellent performance from Kathryn Walker but the scenes of Cash running the furniture obstacle course are probably something that worked better on the page and in the reader’s imagination than when actually presented on film. Michael Murphy is almost too confident and handsome as Cash. The role calls for a former jock slowly going to seed and desperately trying to hold onto his youth whereas Murphy looks like he’s still in peak athletic form. Murphy does a good job portraying Cash’s depression and his alienation after he breaks his leg but, physically, he still seems miscast in the role.

Edward Herrmann and Sigourney Weaver, who were the center of last week’s episode, make a brief appearance in this one, hovering in the background of the neighborhood’s endless parties.

Next week, we finish up 3 By Cheever.

Film Review: The Jackpot (dir by Walter Lang)

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1950’s The Jackpot, James Stewart plays Bill Lawrence.

Bill has a job at a department store. He’s not the manager but he’s still a respected member of the staff and who knows? Maybe his boss (Fred Clark) will give him a promotion someday. He lives in a big, two-story home with his wife, Amy (Barbara Hale). He and Amy have two children, one of whom is played by a 12 year-old Natalie Wood. By all appearances, Bill is doing pretty good for himself. At one point, it’s mentioned that makes a grand total of $7,500 a year.

That definitely caught my attention. “I make more than that!” I snapped at the screen. I pulled up an inflation calculator and I discovered that $7,5000 in 1950 is the equivalent of — wait for it — $102,000 today! (Technically, I still make more than that but still, it’s six figures.)

When Bill answers a phone call from a radio station and guesses the correct answer to a trivia question, he wins $24,000-worth of prizes. (I didn’t bother to figure out how much that $24,000 would be be in 2025 dollars but we can safely assume that it would be quite a bit.) Unfortunately, a lot of the prizes end up costing more than their worth. Bill wins a side of beef , 7,500 cans of soup, and a 1,000 fruit trees but he doesn’t win anywhere to store it all. He also wins a maid, an interior designer, a pony, a swimming pool, a trip to New York, and a session with portrait painter Hilda (Patricia Medina). He also ends up with an income tax bill for $7,000. Remember, he only makes $7,500 a year. Damn the IRS!

Realizing that he’s going to have to sell the majority of his winnings, Bill loses his job when he’s caught trying to sell to the store’s customers. Needing money to pay off his tax bill, he tries to pawn a diamond ring and ends up getting arrested. With his anniversary coming up, he asks Hilda to paint a portrait of Amy from his description of her but Bill ends up spending so much time with Hilda that Amy becomes convinced that he’s having an affair.

Basically, one terrible thing after another happens to Bill, all the result of having won a contest. (The film is loosely based on a true story, with James Gleason playing a fictionalized version of the reporter who wrote the original story.) The movie’s a comedy but, as with the majority of the films that James Stewart made after World War II, there’s a sense of melancholy running through it. Even before he wins the money, Bill doesn’t seem satisfied with his life. Much like George Bailey, he’s restless and wondering if there will ever be more to his life than just his house in the suburbs and his job in the city. Also, like George, Bill learns to appreciate what he has as the result of getting what he wants and discovering that he was happier before. Few actors were as skilled at capturing ennui and dissatisfaction as Jimmy Stewart. The Jackpot is a silly comedy but it’s also an effective portrait of a middle-aged man trying to find peace with the way his life has turned out. That’s almost entirely due to Stewart’s likable but honest performance.

The Jackpot may not be one of Stewart’s most-remembered films but it’s entertaining, with the supporting cast all providing their share of laughs while Stewart provides the film with a heart. The film may be a comedy but it’s also a look at America and Americans adjusting to life in the years immediately following World War II. Suddenly, abundance is everywhere but, as Bill Lawrence, not without a price.

Angels Wash Their Faces (1939, directed by Ray Enright)

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Gangster William Kroner (Bernard Nedell) and his henchman Martino (Eduardo Ciannelli) frame teenager Gabe Ryan (Frankie Thomas) for setting several buildings on fire. Because Gabe has just gotten out of reform school and is a member of a local neighborhood gang, they know that no one will believe him or his sister, Joy (Ann Sheridan).

What Kroner and Martino did not count on were the Dead End Kids (Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, and Benard Punsley). They’re not going to sit by while the adults send their friend to jail. Plus, one of their friends was killed in one of the fires. The kids are out for revenge and sympathetic district attorney Pat Remsen (Ronald Reagan) is on their side.

As a publicity stunt, the city is holding an election for “Kid Mayor.” The Kid Mayor gets to run the city for a week. What could go wrong? Billy Halop decides to run for Kid Mayor so that he can order the arrest of Kroner and then beat a confession out of him.

Angels Wash Their Faces was one of the last of the studio-made Dead End Kid films. After this one, they would be sent down to Poverty Row and their films would be more obviously comedic. Angels Wash Their Faces starts out as a juvenile delinquent drama, with Gabe struggling to rebuild his life and keep on the right track. Then it becomes a goofy comedy, with Billy Halop running for mayor and unleashing vigilante justice on the bad guys. I’m not sure that any city would actually give the “kid mayor” the power to lock people up. Whoever came up with the idea of a kid mayor should be run out of politics.

On the positive side, Ann Sheridan is beautiful. Future president Reagan is his usual friendly self. On the negative side, the movie, overall, lacks the edge that made the first few Dead End Kids films memorable and the Dead End Kids themselves seem to be pretty much interchangeable. Huntz Hall would have made a better mayor.

Film Review: The Murder Man (dir by Tim Whelan)

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Seven minutes into the 1935 film, The Murder Man, 27 year-old James Stewart makes his film debut.

He’s playing a reporter named Shorty and, since this is a 30s newspaper film, he’s first seen sitting at a table with a bunch of other cynical reporters, the majority of whom seem to be alcoholics and gambling addicts. Suddenly, words comes down that a corrupt businessman named Halford has been assassinated, shot by an apparent sniper. (It is theorized that he was shot from one of those carnival shooting gallery games, which was somewhat oddly set up on a street corner. Maybe there was shooting galleries all over place in 1935. I supposed people had to do something to keep their spirits up during the Depression.) While the other reporters run to the scene of the crime, Shorty is on the phone and calling his editors to let them know that a huge story is about to break.

Steve Grey (Spencer Tracy) is the reporter assigned to the story. Crime is his beat and everyone agrees that no one’s better at covering criminals and understanding what makes them tick. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to track Steve down. He’s a hard drinking reporter and lately, he’s been concerned about the collapse of his father’s business. Still, when Steve is finally tracked down, he throws himself into covering the story and speculating, in print, about who could have killed Halford. In fact, his girlfriend (Virginia Bruce) worries that Steve is working too hard and that he’s developing a drinking problem. She suggests that Steve needs to take some time off but Steve is driven to keep working.

It’s largely as a result of Steve’s actions that a man named Henry Mander (Harvey Stephens) is arrested and convicted of Halford’s murder. Steve should be happy but instead, he seems disturbed by the fact that he is responsible for Mander going to jail. When his editor requests that Steve go to Sing Sing to interview Mander, a shocking truth is revealed.

Admittedly, the main reason that I watched The Murder Man was because it was the feature film debut of James Stewart. (Stewart previously appeared in a comedy short that starred Shemp Howard.) Stewart is only in a handful of scenes and he really doesn’t have much to do with the main plot. To be honest, Shorty’s lines could have been given to anyone. That said, Stewart still comes across as being a natural on camera. As soon as you hear that familiar voice, you can’t help but smile.

Even if Stewart hadn’t been in the film, I would have enjoyed The Murder Man. It’s fast-paced mystery and it has a decent (if not totally unexpected) twist ending. It’s one of those films from the 30s where everyone speaks quickly and in clipped tones. Casual cynicism is the theme for the day. Spencer Tracy gives a wonderful performance as the hard-drinking and troubled Steve Grey and the scene where he meets Mander in prison is surprisingly moving. Clocking in at only 68 minutes, The Murder Man is a good example of 30s Hollywood.

Film Review: …. And Justice For All (Dir by Norman Jewison)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1979, ….And Justice For All will always be remembered for one scene.

Yell it with me, “YOU’RE OUT OF ORDER! THE WHOLE TRIAL IS OUT OF ORDER! THEY’RE OUT OF ORDER!”

When attorney Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino) starts screaming in the middle of the courtroom, it’s a cathartic moment. We’ve spent nearly two hours watching as Arthur deals with one insane situation after another. One of Arthur’s partners, Warren (Larry Bryggman), cares more about his car than actually delivering the right documents to a judge. Another of Arthur’s partners, Jay (Jeffrey Tambor), has a nervous breakdown and, after shaving his head, ends up throwing cafeteria plates at people in the courthouse. Arthur has three clients, one of whom is indigent, one of whom is innocent, and one of whom is a wealthy and despised judge (John Forsythe) who has been accused of a rape that Arthur suspects he committed. The system offers no mercy for Arthur’s innocent (or, at the very least, harmless) clients while going out of it’s way to defend the judge. Meanwhile, another judge (Jack Warden), is driven to take suicidal risks, like flying a helicopter until it runs out of fuel and comes down in a nearby harbor. The assistant district attorney (Craig T. Nelson) only cares about his political ambitions and finally, after one incident after another, Arthur snaps. And it’s cathartic because we’re all on the verge of snapping as well.

That final moment, with its signature Al Pacino rant, is such a strong and iconic scene that it’s easy to forget that the film itself is actually rather uneven. The script, by Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin, owes a good deal to the work of Paddy Chayefsky. Just as Chayefsky often wrote about men being driven mad by institutional failure, ….And Justice For All features character after character snapping when faced with the screwed-up realities of the American justice system. The final “out of order” speech is obviously meant to be this film’s version of Howard Beale’s “I’m as mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it!” speech from Network and, much like George C. Scott in the Chayefsky-written The Hospital, Arthur spends a lot of time talking about what he doesn’t like about his job. The thing that sets ….And Justice For All apart from the best works of Chayefsky is that Levinson, Curtin, and director Norman Jewison all take Arthur Kirkland at his word while one gets the feeling that Chayefsky would have been a bit more willing to call out Arthur on his self-righteousness. Arthur has every right to be angry when Warren forgets to give a judge an important document while Warren is substituting for him in court. At the same time, Arthur is the one who trusted Warren to do it. In the end, the document was not about one of Warren’s client. In fact, Warren knew absolutely nothing about the case or Arthur’s client. The document was about Arthur’s client and Arthur was the one who decided trust someone who had consistently shown himself to not be particularly detailed-orientated. One gets the feeling that Chayefsky would not have let Arthur off the hook as easily as Levinson, Curtin, and Jewison do. Arthur’s perpetual indignation can sometimes be a little hard to take.

It’s a very episodic film. Arthur goes from one crisis to another and sometimes, you do have to wonder if Arthur has ever had any human or legal interactions that haven’t ended with someone either going insane or dying. There’s no gradual build-up to the film’s insanity, it’s right there from the beginning. And while this means the narrative often feels heavy-handed, it also makes that final speech all the more cathartic. It’s an uneven film and, of all of the characters that Pacino played in the 70s, Arthur is probably the least interesting. But that final rant makes up for a lot and, fortunately, Pacino was just the actor to make it memorable. For all it’s flaws, the final few minutes of ….And Justice For All make the film unforgettable.

Days of Paranoia: Serpico (dir by Sidney Lumet)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1973’s Serpico, Al Pacino plays a cop who doesn’t look like a cop.

Indeed, that’s kind of the start of Frank Serpico’s problems. He’s a New York cop who doesn’t fit the stereotype. When we see him graduating from the Academy, he’s clean-shaven and wearing a standard patrolman uniform and he definitely looks like a new cop, someone who is young and enthusiastic and eager to keep the streets safe. However, Serpico is an outsider at heart. The rest of the cops have their homes in the suburbs, where they spend all of their time with their cop buddies and where they go also go out of their way not to actually live among the people that they police. Serpico has an apartment in Greenwich Village and, as a plainclothes detective, he dresses like a civilian. He has a beard. He has long hair. He has a succession of girlfriends who don’t have much in common with the stereotypical (and there’s that word again) cop’s wife. Serpico is an outsider and he likes it that way. In a world and a career that demands a certain amount of conformity, Frank Serpico is determined to do things his own way.

However, the real reason why Serpico is distrusted is because he refuses to take bribes. While he’s willing to silently accompany his fellow officers while they collect their payoffs from not only the people that they’re supposed to be arresting but also from the storeowners that they’re meant to be protecting, Serpico refuses to take a cut. Serpico understands that the small, everyday corruption is a way of forcing his silence. The corruption may help the cops to bond as a unit but it also ensures that no one is going to talk. Serpico’s refusal to take part makes him untrustworthy in the eyes of his fellow cops.

Serpico and Bob Blair (Tony Roberts), a politically-connected detective, both turn whistleblower but it turns out that getting people to listen to the truth is not as easy as Serpico thought it would be. The Mayor’s office doesn’t want to deal with the political fallout of a police conspiracy. Serpico finds himself growing more and more paranoid, perhaps with good reason. When words gets out that Serpico has attempted to turn into a whistleblower, his fellow cops start to turn on him and, during a drug bust, Serpico finds himself deserted and in danger.

Serpico opens with its title character being rushed to the hospital after having been shot in the face. This actually happened to the real Serpico as well. What the film leaves out is that hundreds of New York cops showed up at the hospital, offering to donate blood during Serpico’s surgery. That’s left out of the film, which at times can be more than a little heavy-handed in its portrayal of Serpico as an honest cop surrounded by nonstop corruption. Filmed just three years after Serpico testified before New York’s Knapp Commission (which was the five-man panel assigned to investigate police corruption in the city), Serpico the movie can sometimes seem a bit too eager to idealize its title character. (Vincent J. Cannato’s excellent look at the mayorship of John V. Lindsay, The Ungovernable City, presents far more nuanced look at the NYPD corruption scandals of the early 70s and Serpico’s role as a whistleblower.) Director Sidney Lumet later expressed some dissatisfaction with the film and even made other films about police corruption — The Prince of the City, Q & A, Night Falls On Manhattan — that attempted to take a less heavy-handed approach to the subject.

That said, as a film, Serpico works as a thriller and as a portrait of a man who, because he refuses to compromise his ideals, finds himself isolated and paranoid. Al Pacino, fresh from playing the tightly-controlled Michael Corleone in The Godfather, gives an intense, emotional, and charismatic performance as Serpico. (One can see why the image of a bearded, hippie-ish Pacino was so popular in the 1970s.) Sidney Lumet brings the streets of New York to vibrant and dangerous life and he surrounds Pacino with an excellent supporting cast, all of whom bring an authentic grit to their roles. Serpico may not be a totally accurate piece of history but it is a good work of entertainment, one that works as a time capsule of New York in the 70s and as a portrait of bureaucratic corruption. It’s also the film in which Al Pacino announced that he wasn’t just a good character actor. He was also a movie star.

The Girl From Jones Beach (1949, directed by Peter Godfrey)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Painter Bob Randolph is famous for painting a beautiful woman who is known as “the Randolph Girl.” Everyone wants to meet the model but they can’t because there is no one model. Instead, there are a dozen models, each with a perfect feature that Bob uses in his paintings. In need of money, Bob and his business partner, Chuck Donavon (Eddie Bracken) search for a woman who can be the real-life Randolph Girl. Chuck thinks that he’s found her when he spots school teacher Ruth Wilson (Virginia Mayo) but Ruth has no interest in being a model. She wants to be known for how she thinks and not how she looks. Hoping to change her mind, Randolph pretends to be Czech immigrant and enrolls in Ruth’s citizenship class.

When a photograph of Ruth in a swimsuit is published without her prior knowledge, the school board decides that Ruth is not a good role model and they fire her. With the support of Bob and Chuck, Ruth sues for reinstatement. Bob ends up posing in the courtroom in his own swimsuit, the better to prove that there’s nothing wrong with appearing in public in a swimsuit.

The role of Ruth was originally offered to Lauren Bacall, who turned it down because she didn’t think she could play a pin-up. Not to knock Bacall but Virginia Mayo does seem like a better choice for the role of Ruth and she does a good job of bringing the role to life. She proves to be a good match for Ronald Reagan, whose amiable nature allows him to get away with taking her class under a false pretext and speaking in a mangled approximation of a foreign accent. The comedy is light and it fits well with Reagan’s affable screen presence. The film is pleasant but ultimately lightweight and forgettable. I can understand why, by this point in his career, Reagan was getting frustrated with the quality of scripts he was being sent. The Girl From Jones Beach would be forgotten today if it didn’t star the future president of the United States.

Film Review: Patriots Day (dir by Peter Berg)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On April 15th, 2013, a terrible crime was committed.

Two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, bombed the Boston Marathon. I can remember the exact moment when I looked up at the television and I saw the footage of the bomb going off as a group of runners ran across the finish line. Instinctively, I found myself hoping that the explosion looked worse than it actually was and that no one had been seriously injured. However, I was then flooded with images of people running in fear while other lay injured and bleeding on the ground. A photograph of man who had lost his both his legs was seared into my mind, the nightmarish image of those exposed and shattered bones coming to represent the pure evil that was unleashed on that day.

At first, there was a lot of speculation about who was responsible for the bombing. Despite the fact that it had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda operation, many people on the news insisted that the bomb had been set by their favorite boogeymen, the right-wing militias. (The initial theory was that it was a tax day protest, which is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.) Three days after the bombing, the first photographs of the Tsarnaev Brothers were released. Looking at the security footage of Tamerlan placing a bomb on the ground right next to a child who was subsequently killed in the blast, I started to rethink my opposition to the death penalty.

Boston was shut down until the Tsarnaev brothers were tracked down and, along with hating the Tsarnaevs, I found myself fearing that the search for them would normalize the idea of suspending civil liberties. Tamerlan was gunned down in a fight with police and hopefully, he felt each bullet. Dzokhar was captured after he attempted to hide in a homeowner’s boat while whining like a little bitch. Dzokhar is one of three people on the Federal Death Row. He also has a truly creepy fan club online, though they haven’t been as active as they were in the past.

2016’s Patriots Day is about that tragic day and the subsequent manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers. This is another one of Peter Berg’s films about professional, no-nonsense men who have a job to do and who do it well. Mark Wahlberg plays a cop. Kevin Bacon plays the FBI agent who heads up the investigation. John Goodman plays the Boston police commission while Michael Beach makes an appearance as Deval Patrick, the then-governor of Massachusetts who ran a bizarrely overlooked presidential campaign in 2020. Just as he did with Deepwater Horizon, Berg emphasizes the human cost of the tragedy along with the official efforts to track down the men responsible. The ensemble comes together impressively, recreating those scary few days and also paying tribute to a city that refused to allow itself to be defeated. Patriots Day follows the common, blue collar citizens of Boston as they deal with a horrific act of evil. Even though we all know how the story turned out, the film manages to create a decent amount of suspense as the authorities search for the Tsarnaevs. As for the brothers themselves, the film portrays them as being initially cocky and eventually pathetic. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t ask us to consider things from the point of view of the terrorists. There’s no moral relativism here. The film knows who deserves to be heard.

Patriots Day is a tribute to the first responders and the citizens of Boston who refused to allow the Tsarnaevs to win. With so many people now making excuses for terrorism, Patriots Day is a powerful reminder of the human cost of such actions. The Tsarnaevs through they were striking a blow for their ideology. Instead, they just reminded us how strong people can be.

Guilty Pleasure No. 81: The Replacements (dir by Howard Deutch)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2000’s The Replacements finds America in crisis!

With the season already underway, football players are going on strike! They want better contracts. They want more money. They want …. well, they want a lot of stuff. Meanwhile, the fans just want to know who is going to make the playoffs. There are only four games left in the season and the Washington Sentinels need to win three of them to make it into the playoffs. The owner of the team (Jack Warden) recruits burned-out coach McGinty (Gene Hackman) to take over a team that will be made up of replacement players. McGinty says that he wants to pick his own players and he doesn’t want any interference from the team’s owner. Anyone want to guess how long that’s going to last?

McGinty’s team is made up of the usual collection of quirky misfits who show up in movies like this. Tight End Brian Murphy (David Denman, who later played Roy on The Office) is deaf. One of the offensive linemen is a former SUMO wrestler. Orlando Jones plays a receiver who has a day job at a grocery store. The kicker (Rhys Ifan) is a Welsh soccer player. (Okay, a footballer, I don’t care, call it whatever you want.) Jon Favreau plays a berserk defender who is a member of the police force. Leading them on the field is Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), a quarterback with a confidence problem. Cheering for them from the sidelines and falling in love with Shane is bar owner-turned-head-cheerleader Annabelle (Brooke Langton). Backing up Annabelle is a cheer squad made up of former strippers, the better to distract the other teams.

It’s not often you see a film where the heroes cross a picket line but that’s what happens with The Replacements. Then again, it’s not like the folks on strike are driving trucks or unloading freight for a living. They’re multi-millionaires who want even more money and don’t even care about whether the team wins or loses. When the replacement players actually start to win games and become beloved in the city, the striking players react by starting a bar brawl. In the end, striking quarterback Eddie Martell (Brett Cullen) doesn’t even stick with his principles. He crosses the picket line and creates a quarterback controversy, just in time for the last game of the season.

The Replacements is thoroughly predictable but also very likable. The cast gels nicely, with Hackman especially standing out as the gruff but caring coach. Keanu Reeves is not totally believable as a quarterback with a confidence problem. You take one look at Reeves and you don’t believe he’s had an insecure day in his life. But, as an actor, he’s so likable that it doesn’t matter. The same goes for the entire cast, whether they’re on the playing field or singing I Will Survive in jail. I don’t particularly care much about football but I did enjoy The Replacements.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Film Review: The Death of Stalin (dir by Armando Iannucci)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2017’s The Death of Stalin opens in Moscow in 1953. Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) calls into Radio Moscow and demands that he be sent a recording of the piano concerto that has just been performed live. The only problem is that no one bothered to record it while it was being performed. In a panic, the head of Radio Moscow announces that no one — not the musicians, not the exhausted conductor, and certainly not the audience — is allowed to leave until the orchestra has performed again.

Indeed, one of the recurring themes of The Death of Stalin is that everyone is terrified of their beloved dictator. The orchestra fears being executed for failing to recreate their performance. The members of the Central Committee fear being the next person to be purged from the ranks of Stalin’s government. The two guards that are posted outside of Stalin’s bedroom are so terrified of interrupting Stalin and getting on his bad side that they don’t investigate when they hear Stalin collapsing to the floor. When Stalin is found unconscious, the only doctors available are young and inexperienced because Stalin recently exiled all of the good doctors from Moscow. Even after Stalin dies from a cerebral hemorrhage, his reign of terror continues as all the members of his household staff are promptly executed to keep anyone from learning either the exact details of Stalin’s death or the way that the members of the Central Committee responded to his passing.

The Death of Stalin is a dark comedy that follows the members of the Central Committee as they scramble to protect their own positions after Stalin’s death. The humor comes from watching historical figures like Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenti Beria, and Georgy Malenkov act like panicked junior executives who are desperately trying to save their own jobs during a corporate takeover. Of course, the stakes are a bit higher. Whoever succeeds Stalin will undoubtedly want to execute every other contender for the post. As with so many of Armando Iannucci’s works, the humor comes from watching very powerful people act in very immature and petty ways. While Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) tries to convince people that he actually is in charge, the brutal Beria (Simon Russell Beale) tries to bully his way into power and the wily Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi, giving one of his best performances) waits for his moment to strike. (Beria, it should be noted, is one of history’s greatest monsters and the film, while a comedy, does not shy away from his depravity.) Molotov (a hilarious Michael Palin) is so loyal to the Party that he says that Stalin was absolutely correct to have his wife executed just to then have Beria show up and reveal that Molotov’s wife is still alive. Meanwhile, Stalin’s idiot son (Rupert Friend) claims that it’s all an American plot while the rest of the Central Committee laughs at him behind his back. Only Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) seems to have full control of his emotions and his actions and it’s not a surprise to learn that, long after the events depicted in this film, purged from the Party. In The Death of Stalin, the leaders of Russia are obviously scared of anyone who is too competent at their job.

The Death of Stalin is not only a satiric portrayal of petty bureaucrats. It’s also a darkly humorous look of life in a dictatorship, where everyone is at the whim of whoever happens to be in charge at any given time. The film is full of power-hungry narcissists who use their ideology and their nationalism as a shield for their own ambitions. Everyone wants to control someone else. Even as mourners pass by Stalin’s coffin, they’re given orders on how to properly grieve and move. The film ends with a series of pictures of various people either having their faces scratched or, in some cases, just vanishing. In a free country, failure leads to humiliation. In a dictatorship, it leads to non-existence as the formerly prominent are suddenly erased from a history that no longer has a place for them. Ironically, of all the original leaders of communist Russia, it was Molotov who lived the longest. He was 96 when he died in 1986. If not for Stalin’s sudden death, he probably would have been purged and executed at the age of 63.

On this May Day, with so many people currently trying to rehabilitate the reputations of the 20th Century’s worst dictators, The Death of Stalin is must-watch.