3. Inherit The Wind
Inherit The Wind is based on the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, which in turn was a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial, in which a teacher in Tennessee named John T. Scopes was convicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which was against Tennessee law. Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow and was prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan. In the film these respective people are represented by Bertram Cates (Dick York), Harry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) and Matthew Harrison Brady (Frederic March). Inherit The Wind was made in 1960 and deals with events that took place in 1925, but its themes regarding the conflict between evolution and creationism are still thrillingly relevant today. The film also takes its themes and personifies them in the figures of Drummond and Brady, old friends who find themselves on the opposite sides of the creationism/evolutionism debate, with Drummond being an atheist and Brady a strict fundamentalist. Brady is also seen as a prophet in the small Southern town upon which he comes to prosecute Cates. Tracy and March give towering, utterly convincing performances, conveying both the long friendship between the characters as well the passionate difference between the two regarding religion. Gene Kelly, playing against his usual song and dance persona, plays E.K Hornbeck, a smarmy and cynical newspaper man that scoffs at everything happening involving the trial. The film is full of great details, such as when Drummond isn't able to use zoologists or archaeologists as witnesses, or when the judge tells Drummond, ironically, that free thinking isn't being put on trial, when it clearly is. I also love when Drummond has Brady on the witness stand as an expert on the Bible. Brady tells Drummond that a Bible scholar was able to deduce when the supposed creation of the universe began, which was 9:00 am, to which Drummond asks, "Was that Eastern Standard Time?" This film also remarkably makes the hymns Give Me That Old Time Religion and The Battle Hymn of the Republic positively foreboding, signifiers of a town where religion has oppressed the right to think freely.