1776

Tonight's lineup on TCM is a night of movies about real American presidents. I haven't blogged about 1776 before, and it's one of the movies in the lineup, running overnight at 3:15 AM.

Any American should know that Britain's American colonies declared independence on July 4, 1776, at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, but how the colonies got there is a little more complicated. John Adams (William Daniels) is one of the delegates from Massachusetts. The Revolutionary War began in Massachusetts back in 1775, and over the first year or so much of the war dealt with either New England, or the British attempts to go through New York to cut off New England from everything to the south.

As such, the war hadn't really hit the southern colonies to the extent that it had the north, and the southern colonies are rather more reluctant to declare independence. They're also annoyed by what they see as Adams' idée fixe on the matter, although there certainly are delegates who are more conciliatory, such as Richard Henry Lee, who rides back to Virginia to try to get their legislature to approve the idea of indepence. Some colonies such as Pennsylvania are split, with John Dickinson (Donald Madden) being one of the key opponents of an independence declaration, with Ben Franklin (Howard Da Silva) being strongly in favor, and speaking in the sort of epigrams for which he's remembered today.

After much debate, the Congress decides to appoint a committee to write up the declaration and submit it for a vote, which will have to be unanimous with each colony getting one vote. The committee will consist of Adams and Franklin; Roger Sherman of Connecticut, who is probably best known for the compromise at the 1787 Constitutional convention that gave the US our bicamerial legislature with one house based on population and the other having an equal number of votes per state; Robert Livingston from New York; and, of course, Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard) from Virginia, who would go on to write the declaration that we all know today.

Jefferson is reluctant at first to write it, because all he really wants to do is see his wife Martha (Blythe Danner), whom he hasn't seen in months. But he eventually does write it and submits it to the Congress, which has all sorts of problems with the declaration. As you may know, much of the Declaration of Independence is simply a listing of things the colonists felt King George III and his representatives had done that constituted tyranny (my favorite being the one about how "he has sent hither swarns of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance", which is still quite relevant today). Some of the objections would seem nitpicky today; others were a huge problem at the time, especially a passage about slavery which the southern colonies balk at. Adams is an absolutist who wants that passage kept in, while Franklin is a pragmatist who is in favor of kicking the can down the road.

Of course, we all know that the Declaration of Independence did get signed, so there's not necessarily much in the way of surprises here. As a story, 1776 is quite good, dealing with a complex topic and making it both understandable and entertaining, even if there are various minor problems with the history. (To be fair, some characters do have to get written out for dramatic effect and to keep things from becoming too unwieldy.) The acting was good as was the production design.

But I did have some serious problems with 1776. The first is that it's a musical, something which isn't normally my favorite genre of movies. Of course, I knew that going in, but still most of the songs go on too long and bring the movie to a screeching halt. Putting the songs in alst makes the movie run on too long. The TCM schedule lists it as 141 minutes, which was the running time of the original movie on release in 1972. However, it had a couple of songs removed which have been put back in, making the film run close to 165 minutes. (Wikipedia says 168; I think the print TCM ran was a few minutes shorter.) TCM has it in a 165-minute block, and that might not be long enough. One other problem has to do with Abigail Adams, who appears as a sort of dream-like character whenever Adams needs advice. The plot device doesn't really work well either.

People who like musicals will probably love 1776, and anybody who wants an understanding of the complexities of politics will probably find it interesting too. I just wish someone could make a good movie discussing the issues without all the music.