Sunrise At Campobello (1960)......may have arrived in time to kick off a new decade, but it stayed firmly rooted in the structure and attitude of 1940's biographical movies.......
By that we mean the film treated its subject with such fictionalized, glamourized puffed up piety, you'd think the filmmakers spent all their time on their knees in worhipful prayer to whomever the film was about.
The result - Hollywood biographies almost always ended up looking like a sainthood plea for the lionized object of their affection.
One time MGM studio chief and producer-writer Dore Schary based his movie on his own hit Broadway play, a glowing depiction of Franklin Roosevelt and his family before he became America's favorite Uncle-Grandfather and 4 term U.S. President.
We don't begrudge Schary's enormous admiration for Roosevelt as a pivotal, monumental figure in U.S. history.....(how could we, since like millions of other Americans we enjoy the monthly monetary benefits of Roosevelt's 'New Deal' Social Security....)
But since the film never ceases bowing in its respectful, loving tribute-mode, sitting through its still-life, 2 and a half hour running time becomes a punishment of coma inducing boredom.
Ralph Bellamy, after spending a long Hollywood career stuck in the thankless roles of rejected suitors in romances, truly rose to the occasion with his pitch-perfect reproduction of Roosevelt's inescapable charisma, iron willed resolve and enormous love for his large boisterous family.
While Bellamy's like a newsreel come to life, we don't know what to make of Greer Garson's overdone, over-theatrical portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt,(complete with overbite and frooty-tooty sing-song voice) which never rises above the level of a political cartoon caricature.
The only other actor who makes any impression in this stately pageant of a movie is Hume Cronyn, making the most of his showy moments as Louis Howe, Roosevelt's cranky but fiercely loyal friend and advisor.
Every so often, to provide a modicum of dramatic tension, Ann Shoemaker shows up playing Roosevelt's imperious mother, depicted here, much to the displeasure of the real surviving Roosevelt family members, as a meddling, controlling harpy.
Throughout its endless, slowly paced running time, we could pluck out a few individual scenes that shined, such as Bellamy's valiant struggle with the Polio that paralyzed his legs and his wry byplay with Cronyn.. But the film's occupies the bulk of its time in a reverential haze....mostly, .it's too busy building a statue of Roosevelt rather than taking the time to depict him as a flesh and blood human being.
By the time the film slowed to a near dead crawl toward the end (with an excruciatingly dull backroom palaver with New York politician Al Smith), we could only watch it with our eyes half open.
Like a few other classic films, it took us a lifetime to catch up with a viewing of "Sunrise At Campobello" (we'd always missed seeing it somehow). Now that we've finally seen it once.......that's more than enough. 2 stars (**).
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