Most cineastes are more or less left-wing; a film such as 'Big Jim McLain' will be bashed regardless of its intrinsic merits, and whether time has vindicated its picture of widespread communist labour-movement penetration or not. In truth, the movie is a cheap, ill-focused affair, and its prefatory acclaim for the 'undaunted' House Un-American Activities Committee should not excuse its faults, however rock-ribbed one's Republicanism. But it is neither as inept nor as rabid in its ideology as detractors make out.
The pill of anti-communism is sugared by a deal of local colour (not literally; the grass-skirted gals who shimmy in several scenes are ill-served by the monochrome location work). There is some ham-fisted humour and makeup-mashing romance between the Duke and Nancy Olson, a rivalry for her hand with a Navy linguist and slugfests on the waterfront. An unpolitical popcorn-chewer would not have felt cheated.
As discerning reviewers such as Dorothy Jones observed at the time, Hollywood's Red-bashing narratives differed little in substance from wartime anti-Nazi, spyhunting tales or Thirties sagas of G-men busting criminal rackets. The subversives and agitators apparently rife in the Islands are depicted as petty gangsters controlled by a suave but cynical puppeteer, akin to the 'legitimate businessman' at the top of a Mob operation (Alan Napier- the future Alfred the butler in TV's 'Batman').
The story trundles along quite smartly, with long spells when the political fervour of agents Wayne and Arness is relegated. Only the murder of Wayne's partner (which is not dwelt upon) fires him up as he pronounces a eulogy in the morgue over his fellow-Marine turned crusading lawyer; earlier, Wayne had told his girl that he was just firing at the designated enemy, the same way he did in the Pacific. Let us not ask which side the Soviet Union was on in that war! The script plays down the foreign-infiltration aspect, preferring to paint its American communists as men who have lost faith in the country for no obvious reason-- don't mention the Depression-- and are now plotting to enslave it... rather like the Bodysnatchers of a slightly later and better example of paranoid cinema.
Sometimes Wayne's frequent scenarist, James Edward Grant, piles on the moralising. A woman whose husband lured her into the CPUSA expiates the shame by working as a nurse in a leprosy colony. Wayne meets an old couple, obviously Jewish though not identified as such, whose son turned red after winning a trip to the USSR. There is an incongruous episode of a lunatic (Hans Conried, the future Dr Terwilliker) who offers to inform on the party cell, boasts of his secret inventions and contacts with Stalin, and then tells Wayne he has a plan to end all wars by making every man and woman in the world look the same. This irrelevant scene could almost be read as sabotage to convey Grant's real opinion of his assignment and the calibre of McCarthy's snitches.
Olson, the other woman in 'Sunset Boulevard', is overshadowed by Veda Ann Borg's turn as a peroxide lush who fancies the Duke and embarrasses him in a nightclub. Again, if taken seriously this strand of the plot makes the investigation look like a clumsy wild goose chase.
Moreover, Wayne is not the fascistic bully critics purported to see but is poised between the gallant, diffident cowboy of his pre-war movies and the crusty blowhard of the Sixties. It was his first for WB after his smash in 'The Quiet Man', and he makes a pleasant, modest impression. The film, launching his Batjac production company, was very much his pet project-- but maybe as much to help live down his avoidance of war service as to assist Tailgunner Joe. The Warner brothers, incubators of notorious nests of leftists since the mid-Thirties, had something to prove to suspicious congressmen too.
Yet the end is equivocal. The Duke gets the girl, but the CP high-ups he has tracked down plead the Fifth and wriggle out of punishment. Objectively McLain's mission has failed; liberalism, benefit of the doubt, right of non-self-incrimination triumph. There is no 'Green Berets' afflatus as the end-credits roll; the commies live to subvert again. Many of the anti-red movies had this streak of pessimism and half-heartedness. They were against Hollywood's grain.
The truth is that the public does not want to be preached at in return for the price of a ticket, and this muted denunciation went the way of most message pictures-- left or right. But that angle gives it more curiosity value than most actioners of its time.
The pill of anti-communism is sugared by a deal of local colour (not literally; the grass-skirted gals who shimmy in several scenes are ill-served by the monochrome location work). There is some ham-fisted humour and makeup-mashing romance between the Duke and Nancy Olson, a rivalry for her hand with a Navy linguist and slugfests on the waterfront. An unpolitical popcorn-chewer would not have felt cheated.
As discerning reviewers such as Dorothy Jones observed at the time, Hollywood's Red-bashing narratives differed little in substance from wartime anti-Nazi, spyhunting tales or Thirties sagas of G-men busting criminal rackets. The subversives and agitators apparently rife in the Islands are depicted as petty gangsters controlled by a suave but cynical puppeteer, akin to the 'legitimate businessman' at the top of a Mob operation (Alan Napier- the future Alfred the butler in TV's 'Batman').
The story trundles along quite smartly, with long spells when the political fervour of agents Wayne and Arness is relegated. Only the murder of Wayne's partner (which is not dwelt upon) fires him up as he pronounces a eulogy in the morgue over his fellow-Marine turned crusading lawyer; earlier, Wayne had told his girl that he was just firing at the designated enemy, the same way he did in the Pacific. Let us not ask which side the Soviet Union was on in that war! The script plays down the foreign-infiltration aspect, preferring to paint its American communists as men who have lost faith in the country for no obvious reason-- don't mention the Depression-- and are now plotting to enslave it... rather like the Bodysnatchers of a slightly later and better example of paranoid cinema.
Sometimes Wayne's frequent scenarist, James Edward Grant, piles on the moralising. A woman whose husband lured her into the CPUSA expiates the shame by working as a nurse in a leprosy colony. Wayne meets an old couple, obviously Jewish though not identified as such, whose son turned red after winning a trip to the USSR. There is an incongruous episode of a lunatic (Hans Conried, the future Dr Terwilliker) who offers to inform on the party cell, boasts of his secret inventions and contacts with Stalin, and then tells Wayne he has a plan to end all wars by making every man and woman in the world look the same. This irrelevant scene could almost be read as sabotage to convey Grant's real opinion of his assignment and the calibre of McCarthy's snitches.
Olson, the other woman in 'Sunset Boulevard', is overshadowed by Veda Ann Borg's turn as a peroxide lush who fancies the Duke and embarrasses him in a nightclub. Again, if taken seriously this strand of the plot makes the investigation look like a clumsy wild goose chase.
Moreover, Wayne is not the fascistic bully critics purported to see but is poised between the gallant, diffident cowboy of his pre-war movies and the crusty blowhard of the Sixties. It was his first for WB after his smash in 'The Quiet Man', and he makes a pleasant, modest impression. The film, launching his Batjac production company, was very much his pet project-- but maybe as much to help live down his avoidance of war service as to assist Tailgunner Joe. The Warner brothers, incubators of notorious nests of leftists since the mid-Thirties, had something to prove to suspicious congressmen too.
Yet the end is equivocal. The Duke gets the girl, but the CP high-ups he has tracked down plead the Fifth and wriggle out of punishment. Objectively McLain's mission has failed; liberalism, benefit of the doubt, right of non-self-incrimination triumph. There is no 'Green Berets' afflatus as the end-credits roll; the commies live to subvert again. Many of the anti-red movies had this streak of pessimism and half-heartedness. They were against Hollywood's grain.
The truth is that the public does not want to be preached at in return for the price of a ticket, and this muted denunciation went the way of most message pictures-- left or right. But that angle gives it more curiosity value than most actioners of its time.