Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

28 September 2019

Inherit the Wind (1960)

This is very smart and the script absolutely sparkles with both wit and wisdom. My enjoyment of this picture, however, was a bit tempered by just how much time it gives to religious insanity. This film also forces us to listen to "That Old Time Religion" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" numerous times apiece. It was all just way too much for me. There were some true religious nut-jobs in this movie, and the movie gave them a lot of airtime without – to my mind – really telling us the film itself thought these people were terrible.

Also, this is not about the Scopes Monkey Trial, despite the way that poster foregrounds the chimpanzee and says this is the fabulous 'monkey trial' that rocked America. Fabulous? Really? What the movie is really about is a kind of long-form debate about what Christianity ought to look like in the future.

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