Watch Edison, the Man For Free

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

1st watched 9/11/2009 - 7 out of 10 (Dir- Clarence Brown): Wonderful chronicle of a maverick man and his inventions played by the always likable Spencer Tracy. The movie starts with the elderly Edison(with a nice set of makeup) being honored for his invention of the lightbulb, and then the story goes back to his early days before his first major invention. He was already twiddling with telegraph machines at this point, so we don't really get to see where his motivation came from -- just that he liked to do this. He is personally very ambitious from the beginning and knows that he has to have funds to do what he wants, so he stalks one of the richest men in town for his attention. He gets it after fixing one of his machines and he is hired and is given the space and time to create. He and his ragtag group start putting together quite a few accomplishments to the point where they have their own building and steady workforce. He's shown as having a good comraderie with his close knit fellows but has to let them go when things get rough. At least until the lightbulb is created, then things explode. I'm sure this story isn't 100% true when it comes to Edison as a person, but they do make good entertainment with it. Tracy also gives a good performance and is given a couple of nice speeches(that obviously come from the real Edison). Overall, this is light family entertainment, good for everyone, with an educational message. This doesn't happen often in the movies and MGM did well with this one as the usually did in this era.

Spencer Tracy is "Edison, the Man" in this 1940 film also starring Gene Lockhart, Felix Bressart, Gene Reynolds and Charles Coburn. The Clarence Brown-directed film begins with Edison as an old man looking back on his life as he's talking to kids from a school newspaper.Edison had a brilliant mind and invented many things, including conducting something like 2,000 experiments before he found a way to get a light bulb to work. One of his inventions was the "talking machine," and if you go on wikipedia.com, you can actually hear Edison speaking into it. This is my favorite part of the film - I worked on a dictaphone machine back in the '70s that looked like a smaller version of what Edison invents in the movie. The transcriber placed a blue belt with grids in it on a roller, and, as the belt moved, you transcribed. It seems so archaic 30 years later.The film is fairly inaccurate concerning Edison's private life and other details, but hopefully, it's interesting enough that it will inspire the viewer to read all about this remarkable man, well played by Spencer Tracy. The supporting cast is also excellent.Highly entertaining and well worth seeing.

If anyone is looking for a factual account of the life of Thomas Alva Edison this ain't the film for you. In fact Edison the Man is the second film that MGM did on him. Young Tom Edison had come out before this one and Mickey Rooney played a boy's life version of him. At the conclusion of that film there was a preview that Edison the Man would be coming out soon starring Spencer Tracy.The widow Edison who was still alive at the time gave her personal stamp of approval on casting Spencer Tracy as her husband. Who wouldn't want his life's story portrayed by Tracy. But among the many things not shown was the fact that she was the second Mrs. Edison. The first Mrs. Edison, played by Rita Johnson in the film died in the 1880s and Edison married again the Gay Nineties. He had three children with each wife. So you can see a lot of the personal life has been left out.The film is told in flashback as an aged Edison is sitting at a banquet table listening to the toastmaster tell of his life. We only see about 10 years of it from the time he arrives in New York to when he proves the validity of the electric light by powering a section of New York.One of the great quotes from Edison is that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Inventing the electric light was the result of trial and error running into the thousands of methods and that is the part of Edison graphically shown. Edison is always held up as the great example of the American success story. He was a man with little formal education at all who had ideas and the natural ability and will to see them through. It should always be remembered that Edison gained his fame during the Horatio Alger era. He was the living embodiment of those stories about the poor kid who succeeds through hard work. The part of Edison that's not so nice, his battles over patents with other inventors, his ruthlessness in business exploiting those patents, that all comes later. It would take a mini-series to really do his life justice.But I think Edison himself would have loved to see the way MGM handled his life in both films. He certainly would have seen himself as Spencer Tracy plays him, the wise benevolent man, with an iron perseverance.Just don't anyone doing serious research on Edison use this film as a guide to his life.

I like the fact that Edison was nominated for the Oscar for best Original Story. How many biopics can claim that honour ?Spencer Tracy is excellent as the dynamic American inventor. Although he was a 40 year old playing a 25 year old he produced sufficient energy to overcome the obstacle of years. This is a fine piece of acting and is well supported by the bit-parts and by the director who clearly enjoys telling the story of Edison's finest achievements, the invention of the light bulb and of the recording device.The main problem with the film is its lack of balance. We don't hear enough about his theft of patents and his failure to give credit to his co-workers. Edison is a metaphor for America in the early twentieth century, exciting, inventive, thrusting, dynamic but also shallow and lacking in grace.