The Great McGinty

Preston Sturges – 1940
Sturges’ direction is classical, and a pretty anonymous version of that. Establishing, moving in from plan Americain to SRS. Some tracking in and out, that doesn’t really qualify more than framing two shots. People generally stay still and deliver the lines. There are closer views when we can be helped to see something (the bribe).
Sturges does do this well, his direction is pretty much never annoying. It is straight down the line classicism, with no brilliance, just roomy shots where we are shown what is happening.
Saying that, he certainly uses all the obvious classical weapons, and uses them efficiently and clearly. Impositions, montage scenes, are all dispatched nicely, if not really telling us anything new.
The narrative structure here operates as a flashback, with the very light suggestion it’s all made up. There is a hell of a lot of ellipsis, giving, indeed adding to, the general thought that this is a very fake, manicured world, a world of clean surfaces entirely of Sturges’ creation. This is surely enhanced by the quick plot and the almost complete lack of character shading, except at its clearest.
We have a view of politics and mobsters that takes its cynicism as so natural it is almost throwaway. This is just the shitty way things are. In that way, it’s pretty brutal. Yet we also have the man trapped in it, and a sympathy for him, enhanced by the clearness of the piece.