Everything changes, however, when Hammond has an automobile-related brush with death, and comes back from the brink with a newfound commitment to saving his fellow man. Initially his impulses are markedly Rooseveltian -- he asks Congress to authorize a gigantic public works program to get the working poor back on their feet, and fires any of his old cronies who object. Faced with a backlash from his own party, and legislative opposition in Congress, he counters the accusation that he seeks to become a tyrant by embracing the idea, claiming that a benevolent dictatorship is more moral than neglecting the interests of "the People." Later, as he confronts an ongoing wave of gangster-related violence, Hammond takes a can-do attitude, and annihilates a Mob boss who won't buckle under... The scene in which the criminal kingpin is sentenced to die is spectacularly fascistic: Hammond's aide-de-camp (played by an under-used Franchot Tone), dressed in a gleaming military outfit, sits behind a huge Greco-Roman, art deco tribunal bench, and ardently praises Hammond's ability to "cut through the red tape of legal procedures and get back to the first principles -- an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life." Finally, Hammond uses a gigantic display of American military power to blackmail and intimidate the other nations into disarming, summoning an apocalyptic (and sadly, somewhat prophetic) vision of the horrors that await the world if the arms race should continue.
The film is quite remarkable in its outright emulation of fascistic, authoritarian politics, and is unlike practically any other American political film of the era (which were much more prone to upholding the nation's fundamental democratic ideals). Still, it does capture the zeitgeist of the times -- the anxiety and desperation, the urge to find stability and salvation, and the fear of a renewed global war -- it just comes down on a side which didn't get much credence on this side of the Atlantic. Admittedly, this film is a dramatic failure -- for one thing, Huston was a horrid actor; and secondly the script is a bit brusque, talky and shrill -- but historically speaking, it's a fascinating document and deserves consideration in that regard. Those who see it as a parable for the New Deal are sadly mistaken, however -- I think the film's creators may have been far more enamored of Mussolini than they were of good old FDR, who actually did pull us back from the brink.
