Inherit the Wind review
Jun. 9th, 2007 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAnother in the long line of excellent old films that Dave has been obtaining and forcing me to watch, Inherit The Wind tells the story of a science teacher put on trial for teaching Darwinism to his students.
It's difficult to do trial films really well, but this one is well paced and well structured, and has such fantastic characters, debates and acting that the format isn't a problem. Gene Kelly is a revelation as the cynical news reporter - he should have done dramatic roles more often, rather than dancing around with cartoon mice (although he does that extremely well, too, so who am I to judge the merits of different types of acting?).
The actual trial made little sense to me, since the question of whether the teacher had broken the law wasn't in dispute. So, the defence argument that it was a stupid law wasn't likely to get very far. However, the religion versus science debate was presenting in a very interesting manner.
Favourite line: "An idea is a far greater monument than a temple."
It's difficult to do trial films really well, but this one is well paced and well structured, and has such fantastic characters, debates and acting that the format isn't a problem. Gene Kelly is a revelation as the cynical news reporter - he should have done dramatic roles more often, rather than dancing around with cartoon mice (although he does that extremely well, too, so who am I to judge the merits of different types of acting?).
The actual trial made little sense to me, since the question of whether the teacher had broken the law wasn't in dispute. So, the defence argument that it was a stupid law wasn't likely to get very far. However, the religion versus science debate was presenting in a very interesting manner.
Favourite line: "An idea is a far greater monument than a temple."
