Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20498 in VHS
• Released on: 1992-03-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English, Russian
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Amazon.com
In 1940, Preston Sturges's success at writing for stage and screen emboldened him to make Paramount Pictures an offer they couldn't refuse: a virtually free script in exchange for the chance to direct it himself. Commonplace today, the strategy was novel but successful, making Sturges one of the first star writer-directors, and earning him an Oscar for that fateful screenplay.

The Great McGinty introduces the Sturges style largely intact, starting with a shrewd story line rooted in a provocative theme: political corruption. Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) is a tramp who impresses a local crime boss (Akim Tamiroff) by voting 37 times in a rigged mayoral election. McGinty becomes one of the boss's enforcers, then his political protégé, winning the mayor's job as a "reform" candidate, and going on to the governor's mansion before a change of heart compels him to take public service seriously. In Sturges's typically cynical world-view, it's only when the antihero goes straight that the law closes in.

That ironic moral dilemma is but one of many Sturges touches, which also include a marriage of political convenience that inverts the usual "meet-cute" conventions of screwball comedy by having the couple fall for each other six months after they tie the knot. Donlevy, better known as a dramatic heavy, was in keeping with Sturges's penchant for casting "serious" male leads as his protagonists, a thread continued with Joel McCrea and Henry Fonda. In this film, the director also recruits the first members of what would become a reliably fine, comedic repertory company, represented here by William Demarest and Jimmy Conlin, and introduces a career-long affection for combining the verbal sparring of great screwball dialogue with the older, physical kick of slapstick. He would refine and improve these tools to greater effect in subsequent classics, but The Great McGinty is still great fun. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

We need more Preston Sturges on DVD!
Preston Sturges was one of the great directors. This movie is not his best but gives such a taste of things to come. It's so good to see Brian Donlevy play something besides a heavy; he's wonderful playing a complicated man. Akim Tamiroff is so funny. What a great political film. I vote for this and all Preston Sturges to be on DVD and I hope it's soon!

Preston Sturges' directorial debut
After writing several sucessful Hollywood scripts, hotshot Preston Sturges took his first crack at directing, in this crisp, typically cynical, intelligent 1940 debut. The Great McGinty is one Dan McGinty, a down-and-out, yet tough-as-nails tramp who finds opportunity handed to him on a silver platter when a the boss of a big political machine sees McGinty's potential, and taps him to be one of his many henchmen in a statewide graft ring. Affable, savvy, and ruthlessly ambitious, McGinty rises to the top, eventually riding into the governor's office on a hypocritically-fashioned "reform" ticket. Naturally, a woman softens him up, and brings his downfall. As usual, it's difficult not to compare Sturges with the equally populist director, Frank Capra, especially as the plot of this film closely mirrors that of Capra's "Meet John Joe," and other Capra films. How do they stack up? Well, Sturges's story is in certain regards darker, in others less harrowing. His bum-made-reformed-conman starts way more corrupt, and never really softenss to the degree a Capra hero would... He finds his moral center, but not his actual salvation, and the film doesn't have what you'd exactly call a "happy ending," at least not for the hero himself. Other elements are similar, though, particularly in the skillful use of supporting character actors. Particularly appealling here are Akim Tamiroff as the political boss and William Demarest as the stooge who first recruits McGinty. Brian Donlevy, as McGinty, is adequate, but hardly as appealing as some of the actors Sturges would work with later on. Still, a nice example of the Sturges formula at work.

Saw this after Hail the Conquering Hero & immediately
saw where the pattern of Sturges movies began. Take a good solid concept, in this case, political corruption, write a good script around it & satirizes. This formula can work for a long time if you don't take it too seriously & become preachy. Stuges doesn't, he makes it entertaining & funny in the style of its time. Briefly, in this case a bum, literally, thru cunning, intrique, shady dealings, & the help of stupid politicians rises to the heights of political power. It's your rags to riches to rags story. Some of the slapstick shtick is just silly, so I give it 31/2 stars instead of four.