As prophecy, the 1942 movie "Keeper of the Flame" directed by George Cukor, was a failure. However, it was prescient in other ways. First, there is quite a bit in Spencer Tracy's role of a newsman trying to find out what happened in a mysterious murder that has been hidden as a murder that prefigures one of his best roles of the 1950s in "Bad Day at Black Rock." And Katharine Hepburn went on to be a "keeper of the flame" for Tracy and for her relationship with him after his death... and, like her character in this 1942 movie, revealed more of the negative aspects of her dead male cult object than she intended.

Such intertextuality is more interesting than the movie, which is not just a mess, but is a ludicrous mess. The ending is impossible to believe, very melodramatic, and perfunctory—pretty much everything that can be wrong with an ending.The movie's beginning is much better, featuring the funeral of an American hero and a war correspondent (Tracy) who wants to write a hagiography to keep the memory of the Great Man alive.

Though also eager to maintain the reputation of her dead husband, the widow (Hepburn) does not want to co-operate. The movie seems to be moving from "Citizen Kane" territory to "Rebecca"/"Jane Eyre" territory, complete with a mad woman or a truth teller imprisoned so she can't tell the truth in a Gothic mansion on the estate of the deceased Great Man. And there's a colonial-era arsenal that served as his office and becomes the site of Hepburn's long monologue (something like ten minutes of exposition).

The "truth" is in some ways complex, in others ludicrously simplistic. Americans of the 21st century are more accustomed to the feet of clay of its leaders and would-be leaders than 1942 audiences were, and celebrities have been elected to office, even to the highest one. The kind of vigilance that is the price of liberty has been surrendered with hardly a murmur to the kind of surveillance of the Orwellianly named "Defense of Patriotism Act," etc. (though the typical Karl Rove smear campaign did not work out very well since there is legal protection for covert CIA operatives....)

The kind of conspiracy in "Keeper of the Flame" is not what has happened and was a fairly mindless extrapolation of the rise of Hitler in Germany. (The same could be said for Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here.)

Before the monstrously long monologue, Hepburn has to make her first appearance floating into a room in a shimmering white dress, carrying an armful of lilies. This is quite a challenge, and she does well just in keeping it from being laughable.

Although he does not have a comparable monologue explaining himself, Tracy is saddled with being referred to by most everyone as a great reporter in a script that miserably fails to show him being even a moderately good one.

In this pairing of the stars, they are not supposed to be in love, so the lack of erotic charge between them does not matter. What makes the film bad is not the chemistry of the stars, but, to borrow Cukor's own verdict "that the story was basically fraudulent" (Cukor or Cukor, p. 169). Plus it looks very sound-stagey. In retrospect, Cukor could not explain why he didn't at least go out to film a collapsed bridge.

Tracy and Hepburn tried to make something of their ill-conceived and badly written roles. A young Darryl Hickman (older brother of Dwayne) played a sincere and guilt-ridden lad. The one performer who manages to ignite a role is Margaret Wycherly (who also played James Cagney's "Ma" in "The White Heat" and Cary Cooper's in "Sgt. York") as the mother of the Great Man. She gets to wobble in and out of madness, so that it is genuinely difficult to know when she is delusional and when she is accurately reporting the dynamics and events of her son's life, marriage, nefarious treasons, and death. Plus there's Percy Kilbride before he became "Pa" Kettle as a very independent and closed-mouth New England taxi driver. And more-than-competent cinematography from William H. Daniels (Greed, The Far Country, the first Ocean's Eleven, Valley of the Dolls, etc.)

A lot of talented people with so little to show for it herein. Political analysis was not George Cukor's forte, but that's only part of an explanation for this mess.


Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age