Movies that deal with the political arena have an appealing milieu for dramatizing morally complex problems. In the past the genre has called forth very high-calibre work from exceptionally skilled directors and talented actors.
I think of four extraordinary political films, all classics: Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), with James Stewart as an idealistic Boy Scout leader who unveils corruption in the U.S. Senate; Preston Sturges’s The Great McGinty (1940), with Brian Donlevy as a dishonest hobo turned crooked politician; Robert Rossen’s All the King’s Men (1949), with Broderick Crawford as demagogue Willie Stark, as personally seductive as he is ruthless and amoral; and Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957), with Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, a cracker barrel philosopher turned television celebrity who gains enormous political power.
Though not a classic, City Hall can hold its own in this company. In terms of realism, it even surpasses them. City Hall subtly captures the moral complexity of big city politics in which compromise is the guiding principle and practice. Director Harold Becker, who previously directed Onion Field (1979) and Sea of Love (1989), uses an excellent screenplay, partly written by Ken Lipper, who was deputy mayor of New York in Ed Koch’s administration.
To ask its moral questions, City Hall assumes the guise of a mystery thriller. The movie opens with a fatal meeting: on a street corner a detective and drug dealer shoot it out and a stray bullet hits a six-year-old boy. All three lie dead in the street as New York’s ambitious Astoria-born mayor, John Pappas (Al Pacino), in the midst of greeting Japanese dignitaries, is informed of the killings. Investigation ultimately reveals that the drug dealer was unjustifiably out on parole because somebody with political clout arranged it. The trail starts with a Mafia leader, Paul Zapati (Anthony Franciosa), goes through county leader Frank Anselmo (Danny Aiello) to Judge Walter Stern (Martin Landau), whom someone told to sign the parole release. Deputy Mayor Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack), a Louisianian lapsed Catholic who is still very idealistic, is determined to follow the trail of evidence wherever it leads. The shades of gray that filter through city politics are visually suggested in Pacino’s face, half of which is often photographed in shadow. When the mayor insists on speaking at the dead boy’s funeral, we know that for all his ambition, Pappas wants to help people.
City Hall boasts some excellent performances. Franciosa, in a welcome return to the screen, and Cusack are just right as the forces of evil and good that shape the other characters. Landau is fine, but Pacino and Aiello are exceptional. With the intensity that has marked his best performances and justly won him the reputation as one of the most gifted contemporary film actors, Pacino shows Pappas as a wheeling dealing politician, who wants to advance but also wants to be a good man.
Aiello’s role is based partly on the legendary party boss of Brooklyn, Maude Esposito, who eventually went to jail for bribery, and Donald Manes, the Queens borough president who committed suicide after his involvement in a 1988 corruption scandal was made public. The one casting mistake is Bridget Fonda as an attorney for the Detectives’ Endowment Association. Another minor mistake is the flippant narration about New York by Calhoun at the beginning and end of the film. It doesn’t suit this very serious film.
City Hall is good enough to remind us that when harnessed and directed properly, Hollywood can probe deeply and successfully into moral failures and successes, and like a cinematic Socratic voice, remind us that the unexamined life is not worth living.