It's the power of Henry Fonda's performance that turns Gideon's Trumpet, the true story of how the right to counsel for all criminal suspects was guaranteed by the United States Supreme Court, into something a bit more than a cheapjack made-for-TV movie.
Fonda has enough sense to make Clarence Gideon something less than a hero. Gideon is an intelligent ne'er-do-well, and the viewer grows to dislike him despite his importance in our judicial history. We want him to win, but we certainly don't want him in our house.
I don't know if columnist Anthony Lewis' book of the same name has Gideon as, well, as ucky as in the movie, but Fonda, toward the end of his life, seemed unhappy and defeated, and it made his portrayal of Clarence Earl Gideon totally acceptable and believable.
The rest of Gideon's Trumpet is ordinary for TV, thrown-together and dumbed-down. John Houseman's misplaced weight behind the production--and his awful miscasting of himself as Earl Warren-- leave the movie feeling washed out and ready for a high school civics class.
Except for Fonda, and Mel Ferrer's portrayal as Abe Fortas, we never really buy into the movie. Like the justices themselves, we are nothing much more than intellectual observers.
A shame.
Fonda has enough sense to make Clarence Gideon something less than a hero. Gideon is an intelligent ne'er-do-well, and the viewer grows to dislike him despite his importance in our judicial history. We want him to win, but we certainly don't want him in our house.
I don't know if columnist Anthony Lewis' book of the same name has Gideon as, well, as ucky as in the movie, but Fonda, toward the end of his life, seemed unhappy and defeated, and it made his portrayal of Clarence Earl Gideon totally acceptable and believable.
The rest of Gideon's Trumpet is ordinary for TV, thrown-together and dumbed-down. John Houseman's misplaced weight behind the production--and his awful miscasting of himself as Earl Warren-- leave the movie feeling washed out and ready for a high school civics class.
Except for Fonda, and Mel Ferrer's portrayal as Abe Fortas, we never really buy into the movie. Like the justices themselves, we are nothing much more than intellectual observers.
A shame.