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The Last Hurrah
John Ford's 1958 film looks like a family wake, only it isn't his family that he's invited. As the familiar faces glide past--Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien, Basil Rathbone, Edward Brophy, James Gleason, Ricardo Cortez, Wallace Ford, Frank McHugh--all at or near the end of their careers, it feels as if Ford is holding a funeral for a lost Hollywood. But it isn't his Hollywood; these aren't his people--which may account for the film's strangely cool, distanced tone. Edwin O'Connor's novel, about the last campaign of an old-time political boss, seems to have touched something deep in Ford, but the feelings--for the passing of a tradition, of a way of life--remain inchoate, generalized, detached. The film stands as a haunting failure. 121 min. |
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