Watch Wilson For Free

Better Late Then Never

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

In 1909, Princeton University professor Alexander Knox (as Woodrow Wilson) is recruited to run for Governor of New Jersey. Espousing democratic ideals and ousting establishment crooks, Mr. Knox is a great success. This puts the Governor on the political fast track and, in 1912, he is elected President of the United States. Knox' "Wilson" reluctantly steers America through the "war to end all wars" (later called World War I) against Germany and attempts to prevent future World Wars by organizing a "League of Nations" to settle international disputes. Republicans campaign against the idea. At home, the President suffers great personal tragedy when his wife is taken ill. Later, his own heath falters...One of Hollywood's notorious flops, "Wilson" was actually a hit with audiences – but, like many box office failures, the film did not make enough money to offset its considerable cost. Fox needed a blockbuster, and "Wilson" fell far short. Other expensively-made movies haven't aged well, but "Wilson" has – it's quite artful. The film won five well-deserved technical "Oscar" awards. There were nominations for producer, director Henry King and Knox. They must have wondered what else they had to do to win an "Academy Award". All three won first place "Film Daily" awards, where "Wilson" was seen more in 1945 while the stiffly competing "Going My Way" polled in 1944.******** Wilson (8/1/44) Henry King ~ Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ruth Nelson, Thomas Mitchell

. . . put out during a low point in U.S. public support for WWII, as Clint Eastwood's FLAG OF OUR FATHERS recently reminded us. This Bio-Pic WIL$ON found America on the verge of giving up the fight against Hitler and Hirohito due to lack of funding from a war-weary nation. Most U.S. citizens today are totally unaware that during WWII, ALL Hollywood movies had to comply with a 12-point checklist from the American War Department proving each film did enough to promote the U.S. war effort. Yes, this was on top of the 10-year-old program of "moral" censorship imposed on this self-proclaimed "free country." Yes, all this happened IN AMER!CA, even though it sounds like something that could only be dreamt up by Nazis. Therefore, WIL$ON glosses over Woodrow's life-long crusade against organized Labor and the American Common Man (hardly visible from Wilson's roots in Ivy League "ivory towers"). Of course, WIL$ON fails to point out Woodrow (campaign slogan in 1916: "He kept us out of the War") Wilson's voter back-stabbing decision to maim or kill hundreds of thousands of young American men then on the verge of making the entire country a "Union shop," with living wages, safe working conditions, and respect for normal citizens prevented us from achieving the very "peace on Earth" to which he was always giving lip service. Instead, Woodrow pushed the U.S. down the slippery slope toward the hopeless pit of Today, in which the "1 per cent" hoards 90% of Our Wealth, leaving the remaining 99% of us to scramble for the remaining 10% of Economic Crumbs. WIL$ON won five Oscars, just as German fat cats lauded director Leni Riefenstahl for her propaganda masterpiece--TRIUMPH DES WILLENS--a few years earlier.

As was mentioned elsewhere, this was perhaps one of the first "big films" to win and compete for so many Academy Awards and be a flop at the box office. Now the divide between box office and critical acclaim is largely a predictable abyss, but it was still novelty in 1944.This was Darryl F. Zanuck's personal project, created after he returned from his service in WWII. Zanuck supervised every phase of production, and wanted to give Americans a film about an American that personified the ideals they were fighting for in Europe and in the Pacific - those of the equality of all men, and that Americans value peace but will fight if confronted and when they do fight, they pull out all the stops. In 1944, if one was to make a biopic about such a man, the obvious choice would be Woodrow Wilson. FDR might be a more obvious choice today, and his legacy has largely eclipsed that of Wilson, but at the time FDR was still alive and the sitting President, so portraying him in a biopic would be inappropriate.Alexander Knox was a perfect choice to play Wilson, looking, moving, and even talking just like him. Most might find this rather long at two and a half hours, and the Technicolor will not impress in the year 2013, and Wilson's views on race have been conveniently omitted, but I think it's time well spent to remember a President, a film, and an actor not often remembered today. As a special treat, you even get to hear Charles Coburn sing!

For those who dismiss Wilson as a propaganda war time film, they are making a vast mistake. It's propaganda to be sure, but it's propaganda concerning our war aims both in the First and Second World War and how they fell short of the mark. At least the mark set by Woodrow Wilson who was our 28th president and subject of this biographical film.Prior to our entry into World War II, the country was in a great debate, with it almost split down the middle as to whether we should get involved in the second World War. When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor that debate ceased and we went to war with only one dissenting vote in the House of Representatives. The isolationist Senators who opposed the American entry before Pearl Harbor became an endangered species. Most over the elections of 1942, 1944, and 1946 in the Senate were defeated or chose to retire.It was an article of faith that had we entered the League Of Nations as Woodrow Wilson wanted there might not have been a second World War. The pressure for American entry into a new world organization was near irresistible. And this film makes the case for the reason why.The film covers that portion of Woodrow Wilson's life from the time some Democratic political bosses approached the President of Princeton University to see if he'd be interested in being governor to the end of his term in the White House in 1921. The film covers roughly an 11 year span. It does get the main points of Wilson's life accurately recorded.Some names were changed, Thurston Hall's character of the political boss who approached Wilson was actually named James Smith and was a former US Senator who desired to go back to Washington. The characters that Charles Coburn as one of Wilson's professors at Princeton and William Eythe as a student whom we last see going to France as a doughboy are as far as I can tell completely fictional. But both serve as sounding boards for the Wilson character.The women play a great part in Wilson's life, he was married twice and had three daughters with his first marriage. Ruth Nelson plays Ellen Axson Wilson his first wife who dies in the White House a year after his inauguration. She was a person who could occasionally bring him to a halt when he got too self righteous which even his devoted admirers agree he could.The second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson played by Geraldine Fitzgerald was also supportive. She however tended to mirror and exacerbate the worst features of his personality. She is also credited with being our first unofficial female president when Wilson suffered his stroke in September of 1919. Maybe she was in fact because she controlled who and what had access to his person during the last 16 months of his term. Today historians firmly believe that Wilson made two disastrous blunders by first calling for a Democratic Congress to be elected in 1918 and the war weary public responding in the opposite. Not the way to go if you want bipartisan support. And secondly not taking members of the Senate who had to pass on the treaty with a 2/3 vote to help in the negotiation. Wilson's predecessor William McKinley in ending the Spanish American War had no less than five members of the Senate involved in the process.If the film has a villain it's of course Henry Cabot Lodge played by Cedric Hardwicke, unrecognizable in the white mane and goatee that the real Lodge had. Lodge may have wanted to kill Wilson's treaty by increments because it was Wilson's treaty, but he also raised some valid points about American sovereignty. Historians today recognize the strengths and faults of both men.Whatever else Wilson was, he was a person of high ideals who did quite a bit in his term in the White House. The idealism of Wilson is what Alexander Knox captures well. Wilson was 20th Century Fox's prestige picture for 1944, it received ten Oscar nominations and won five Oscars that year in technical categories. Unfortunately it was also up against Going My Way in 1944 and it lost Best Picture to that classic, Bing Crosby beat out Alexander Knox for Best Actor, and Henry King lost for Best Director to Leo McCarey. Historical revisionism has dated Wilson badly and it doesn't hold up well. Woodrow Wilson isn't on quite as high a plane as he was in 1944 when we were trying to sell the United Nations to the American public. Still it's not a bad film, but should be viewed with a whole salt shaker.