The Power and the Glory

This is the movie that made a massive impact on the young Orson Welles, telling the story of a railway magnate's life in a series of non-chronological flashbacks, with different characters revealing different aspects of the great man himself. Sound familiar? Well, Citizen Kane this isn't. William K Howard's direction is turgid in the extreme and Preston Sturges's script is underdeveloped. Spencer Tracy fails to elicit sympathy in the lead, yet the studio was so certain of the film's appeal that it offered Sturges the first "percentage of gross" deal in movie history. Today, of course, The Power and the Glory can't help but seem historically interesting, but, despite its relatively short running time, it's actually something of an endurance test.