Some movies are strictly for entertainment, and some have much to say about the issues facing us. In this election year, Turner Classic Movies is devoting Friday nights this fall to the latter.
“Making Change: The Most Significant Political Films of All Time” begins tonight and continues through November 1, the last Friday before Election Day. The films are drawn from a list compiled by The New Republic last year of the 100 most impactful political movies.
The films encompass both documentaries and dramatized works; most are American, while a few are from other countries. Their release dates range from 1915 (The Birth of a Nation) to 2016 (I Am Not Your Negro). Many will have celebrity presenters introducing them, along with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.
LGBTQ+ issues won’t be neglected. I Am Not Your Negro, for instance, is a documentary based onan unfinished manuscript by Black gay writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, reflecting on the lives of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Baldwin himself. The Times of Harvey Milk(1984) will be featured, presented by Sally Field, the proud mother of a gay son. Also scheduled are 1964’s The Best Man, scripted by gay writer Gore Vidal, in which a same-sex liaison threatens to derail a politician’s career, and Born in Flames, director Lizzie Borden’s 1983 vision of a dystopian future in which women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color are oppressed.
Borden will be among the celebrity presenters, introducing Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Chantal Akerman’s 1975 feminist feature about a widow engaged in sex work. Melissa Etheridge will be a presenter as well, discussing the 1928 silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc.
“I’m incredibly proud of the series,” Mankiewicz says. “I’m proud that we did it.” He had “fun, spirited conversations” with the presenters, who are drawn from a wide political spectrum.
The presenters all got to choose which movie from The New Republic’s list they wanted to discuss, although they were generally flexible if they found out their first choice was taken. Etheridge chose The Passion of Joan of Arc “because she was moved by it, really first and foremost … this sort of willingness to suffer for what you believe in,” Mankiewicz says. “That, taken with the beauty of [star] Falconetti’s performance, was what really got her.”
Ben Mankiewicz and Sally Field discuss The Times of Harvey MilkCourtesy TCM
In working with the celebrity presenters, Mankiewicz encountered “little things I didn’t know would be amazing.” One of the highlights for him was talking with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who is Black, about The Birth of a Nation, the D.W. Griffith work that advanced the art of film but glorified racism and helped rebirth the Ku Klux Klan. “You’re instantly taken away by the depth of his knowledge,” Mankiewicz says of Bouie.
Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia state representative and gubernatorial candidate, “was really thrilling,” Mankiewicz notes. She discusses Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Frank Capra’s 1939 film about a naïve but honest senator (James Stewart) standing up to corrupt colleagues. “It speaks to her and why she got into politics,” the TCM host says.
Filmmaker Barry Levinson, “in the best way possible, was the most eager person to do it, and he only wanted to do A Face in the Crowd,” Mankiewicz says. The 1957 film from director Elia Kazan stars Andy Griffith as a faux-folksy entertainer turned ambitious politician who’s contemptuous of his followers — a work that’s uncannily prescient, considering the rise of Donald Trump.
Steven Spielberg is the only presenter doing two movies: All the King’s Men, from 1949, based on Robert Penn Warren’s novel about a demagogic Southern pol, and All the President’s Men, a from 1975, dramatizing the story of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they seek to expose the Watergate scandal.
Also, Mankiewicz’s brother Josh, a reporter for NBC’s Dateline, will introduce The Best Man.
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The Mankiewicz family has a long history with both movies and politics. Ben and Josh’s father, Frank Mankiewicz, was press secretary to Robert F. Kennedy during Kennedy’s time in the U.S. Senate and his 1968 presidential campaign. He was the one who announced Kennedy’s death from an assassin’s bullet shortly after RFK had won the crucial California Democratic primary. Frank Mankiewicz went on to work on George McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972, then became president of National Public Radio a few years later.
Frank’s father was prolific Hollywood screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, famed as the co-writer of Citizen Kane, and his uncle was writer-producer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, known for All About Eve and many other films.
Ben Mankiewicz says his father, who died in 2014, “would have been stunned” by Trump. Frank Mankiewicz was a staunch Democrat, but he could easily work with people who had different views, and such collaboration is nearly impossible today. But his father would remain hopeful, Ben says.
“My dad was always incredibly optimistic about the country,” he says. He felt it was always making progress, even if not always in a straight line.
Frank Mankiewicz “was routinely the smartest person that anyone knew,” Ben adds. “My brother and I still miss him to this day.”
As for Hollywood and politics, the film industry often struggles to get the subject right. “They think if we’re too inside baseball, we’ll turn people off,” Ben Mankiewicz says. But when Hollywood gets it right, the films are great, he adds.
TCM audiences will likely find many of these films great. Mankiewicz will also discuss politics-related information this Sunday on CBS Sunday Morning, joined by Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlett on the acclaimed TV series The West Wing, as well as film professor Annette Insdorf and critic Michael Schulman.
See the schedule of all TCM “Making Change” films and guest presenters below, along with each film’s rank on The New Republic’s list. All times are Eastern, so check your local listings.
Friday, September 6 - Night One
8:00 PM The Battle of Algiers (1966) (cohosted by Michael Tomasky - #1)
10:15 PM All the King’s Men (1949) (Steven Spielberg - #59)
12:15 AM The Great Dictator (1940) (John Turturro - #26)
2:30 AM Fail Safe (1964) (#99)
4:30 AM Ivan the Terrible: Part Two (1958) (#85)
6:00 AM Salt of the Earth (1954) (#31)
Friday, September 13 - Night Two
8:00 PM Reds (1981) (Bill Maher - #41)
11:30 PM The Parallax View (1974) (Kyle Smith - #47)
1:30 AM Germany, Year Zero (1948) (Alexander Payne - #97)
3:00 AM Gabriel Over the White House (1933) (#30)
4:30 AM The Battleship Potemkin (1925) (#7)
6:00 AM The Fog of War (2003) (#56)
Friday, September 20 - Night Three
8:00 PM Dr. Strangelove (1964) (Spike Lee - #3)
9:45 PM Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) (Stacey Abrams - #11)
12:15 AM Hearts and Minds (1974) (Phil Mattingly - #39)
2:15 AM The Lives of Others (2006) (#19)
4:45 AM Born in Flames (1983) (#43)
6:15 AM Bicycle Thieves (1948) (#52)
Friday, September 27 - Night Four
8:00 PM Three Days of the Condor (1975) (Maureen Dowd - #72)
10:15 PM I Am Not Your Negro (2016) (Sara Sidner - #58)
12:00 AM The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (Melissa Etheridge - #88)
1:30 AM The Last Hurrah (1958) (#57)
3:45 AM Night of the Living Dead (1968) (#35)
5:15 AM The Tin Drum (1979) (#92)
Friday, October 4 - Night Five
8:00 PM The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) (Sally Field - #81)
10:00 PM The Best Man (1964) (Josh Mankiewicz - #69)
12:00 AM I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) (Sec. Lonnie Bunch III - #95)
1:45 AM City Hall (1996) (#80)
3:45 AM Strike (1924) (#25)
5:15 AM High and Low (1963) (#84)
Friday, October 11 - Night Six
8:00 PM A Face in the Crowd (1957) (Barry Levinson - #10)
10:15 PM Wag the Dog (1997) (Diane Lane - #54)
12:00 AM The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971) (Abby Phillip - #37)
1:45 AM JFK (1991) (#34)
5:00 AM Z (1969) (#15)
7:15 AM Night and Fog (1956) (#21)
Friday, October 18 - Night Seven
8:00 PM The Birth of a Nation (1915) (Jamelle Bouie - #5)
11:30 PM Lincoln (2012) (Hon. Robert M. Gates - #24)
2:15 AM Malcolm X (1992) (#22)
6:00 AM Primary (1960) (#38)
Friday, October 25 - Night Eight
8:00 PM All the President’s Men (1976) (Steven Spielberg - #4)
10:30 PM Citizen Kane (1941) (Frank Luntz - #33)
12:45 AM Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) (Lizzie Borden - #36)
4:15 AM Olympia Part One: Festival of Nations (1938) (#86)
6:15 AM Olympia Part Two: Beauty of the Festival (1938) (#86)
Friday, November 1 - Night Nine
8:00 PM Being There (1979) (Andy Garcia - #71)
10:30 PM The Candidate (1972) (Kaitlan Collins - #20)
12:30 AM Harlan County USA (1976) (Lee Grant - #12)
2:15 AM The Manchurian Candidate (1962) (#2)
4:00 AM Weekend (1967) (#94)
