Inherit the Wind

Inherit the Wind sees Spencer Tracy in one of his best performances as the defence lawyer in the 1925 Tennessee Monkey Trial - a court case revolving around a schoolteacher who dared teach his pupils Darwin's theory of evolution.

Facing the death threats and simple hatred of the townspeople as well as the court case, things do not look good. Howeven in classic courtroom drama style its not over until the verdict is announced, and Tracy battles it out to the bitter end with the politician and Southern Baptist who comes to prosecute on behalf of God (and make a name for himself at the same time.)

Needless to say, its attempts to resolve the conflict between bible and laboratory reach not-so-deep into the Protestant heart of white America. But as a cultural document it remains a valid attempt to deal wfth the apparent contradictions of science and spirituality in an age where science was constantly shattering traditional perceptions of the world and religion seemed under threat.

In that sense, it is an indictment of the authoritarian state and the doctrine of the "true American", as McCarthyism might have perceived it, as opposed to the free-thinking democratic American embodied in our stoic, tolerant intelligent and spiritual schoolteacher.

It's nicely tense and invites more than a sneer at the backwater provincialism of the townspeople and the political cynicism of the prosecutor.

Approachable, dramatic, occasionally funny, and, beyond its Hollywood trappings actually intellectually engaging. This one's worth watching.

Review by Ian Lindley
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95