F.B.I. STORY - DVD review

Jimmy Stewart was on a roll in the late '50s, but not all of his pictures were as successful as "Vertigo" or "Anatomy of a Murder." After making the tedious "Spirit of St. Louis" in 1957, he made the equally tiring "FBI Story" in 1959.

I've read that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover personally asked Warner Bros. to get Stewart to play the role of fictional agent Chip Hardesty, a man who is supposed to represent the best in all FBI agents everywhere. Hoover believed Stewart personified the honest, persistent, all-American qualities he saw embodied in a typical agent. Hoover also insisted that he have final script approval and that an actual government agent act as a technical advisor to oversee the production. The film attempts to show, as the trailer announces, "the real, the authentic, the fascinating inside story of the FBI."

The result looks and feels like a recruiting poster for the Bureau.

WB gave it their best shot, using one of the top actors of the day, Stewart; one of the top directors, Mervyn LeRoy ("Anthony Adverse," "Random Harvest," "Little Women," "Quo Vadis," "Mister Roberts," "The Bad Seed," "Gypsy"); and one of the top composers, Max Steiner. Nothing helped.

The movie liberally intersperses scenes of Hardesty's family life with scenes of his crime-fighting exploits over a period of four decades. It's obvious the filmmakers were intent on showing how straight-arrow the Bureau's agents were--clean-cut, hardworking law enforcers with strong family values. The movie never mentions the fact that for many years Hoover refused to acknowledge the existence of organized crime in America or that he kept his own private life a closely guarded secret. Hoover's critics argue that the Mafia knew about Hoover's lifestyle and used that knowledge to keep him off their backs. Be that as it may, the movie is much too long at two-and-a-half hours, and it spends much too much of its time establishing and maintaining Hardesty's and the Bureau's wholesome image at the expense of any serious sustained action or interest.

Things begin in 1959, as Hardesty is lecturing a class of new FBI recruits on the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We, the audience, are supposed to be listening in on this history lesson. The question is why Hardesty would tell the young FBI students more about his own personal family life than about the exploits of the agency. There is a pretty good series of crime vignettes in here, but in addition we get about 100 minutes or so of family soap. In other words, the framework for the movie doesn't work because the narration the filmmakers set up doesn't make sense.

As it is, the crime capers start with a mad bomber (Nick Adams) blowing up an airliner in 1955 and the modern Bureau tracking down the killer. Then we go back to the beginnings of the FBI in the mid 1920s, when Hardesty is just starting out with the agency. But before we get to any action, we have to endure a long, drawn-out episode involving his courtship and marriage to a young woman (Vera Miles) who doesn't understand why he wants to be an FBI agent rather than a lawyer. The movie never fully answers that question, except to say that all FBI agents are loyal citizens dedicated to truth, justice, and the American way. You practically expect an American flag to fly behind Stewart, and, in fact, it gets close to that at the end of the movie when he and his family are shown framed between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

Anyway, following his marriage the story introduces us to a set of historical crime capsules that highlight various chapters in the FBI's history. For instance, the Bureau sends Hardesty to the deep South in the late 1920s to examine the Ku Klux Klan. Then they send him to Oklahoma in the early 1930s to investigate the murder of some oil-rich Native Americans. Following that episode, we see the FBI's involvement in the capturing or killing of Midwest outlaws Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, Ma Barker, and Machine Gun Kelly. These are famous names, but, as I say, there is never a word about the big crime syndicates of the day.

During the Second World War, we see Hardesty tracking Nazi and Japanese infiltrators, including a wholly unnecessary trek to Brazil; and then after the War we find him ferreting out Communist spies. The final crime chapter involves Hardesty in the surveillance of a Communist informer, a sequence that drags on for the final twenty minutes. It appears to me that the only thing it proves is how tedious the job of an FBI agent can be.

In between these various crime segments, we learn more than we could ever want to know about Hardesty's personal life, his wife, his kids, their growing up, their marriages, their tragedies, the grandkids, and the Christmas dinners. The action sequences play second fiddle to these domestic concerns.

Hoover was very proud of "The FBI Story." If you can stay awake through it, you might like it, too.

Video:
Warner Bros. present the picture in a 1.78:1 ratio, transferred to disc at a fairly high bit rate and enhanced for widescreen TVs. The print looks good in terms of wear and tear, with only a few age flecks and the occasional patch of grain. Still, the Technicolor has an oddly dull, muted appearance to it, which doesn't quite look natural. Facial colors, especially, seem not quite right, sometimes a bit too pink, sometimes too orange. Definition is fine, but not perfect.

Audio:
Stewart narrates throughout the movie, a smart move on the filmmakers' part since he had one of the most recognizable voices in the world. The Dolby Digital 1.0 monaural sound does a credible job reproducing his narration with clarity and ease. Otherwise, there isn't much to say. The soundtrack is quiet; even turned up, there is hardly a trace of background noise. But almost all the other things, like the frequency extremes and the dynamic contrasts, are ordinary.

Extras:
Perhaps Warner Bros. sensed that this would not be one of their best sellers, so they afforded it next to nothing in the way of extras. There are thirty-seven scene selections, but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English only as the spoken language; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Shots:
The filmmakers could have called this movie "The Family Hour" and nobody would have noticed the difference. Well over half the picture is devoted to agent Hardesty's family life, with his Bureau work tossed in at intervals to show us what a great job they were doing. There are a couple of interesting moments that combined might add up to a good half-hour television show. I'd say this one is strictly for James Stewart fans.

Warner Bros. have made "The FBI Story" available individually or in the box set "James Stewart: The Signature Collection." Here, you will also find "The Spirit of St. Louis," "The Naked Spur," "The Stratton Story," and a double-feature disc containing "The Cheyenne Social Club" and "Fire Creek."