10 great polit­i­cal speech­es in film

This short clip of Mal­colm X’s famous ​“Bam­boo­zled” speech doesn’t real­ly do jus­tice to a film lit­tered with incred­i­ble podi­um pitch­es. This marked the point Den­zel Wash­ing­ton went from being an amaz­ing actor, to an unim­peach­able god of the screen. The sound and fury he injects into each and every syl­la­ble gives the impre­ci­sion that he’s not mere­ly recit­ing these words, but he believes in them too.

As print baron Charles Fos­ter Kane decides to par­lay his assets into the polit­i­cal are­na, this speech marks the moment he believes he has the posi­tion of Gov­er­nor of New York all sewn up. And yet, this speech proves that a pub­lic dis­play of good char­ac­ter is only half of the bat­tle, as his ambi­tions are scup­pered when his cam­paign is ham­strung by the kind of scan­dal he him­self would’ve scooped up and plant­ed on the front page.

Warn­ing: if you decide to watch the video below this text, of Charles Laughton recit­ing the Get­tys­burg Address, go first and fetch a hand­ker­chief. In fact, grab a whole box of the damn things. Leo McCarey’s hilar­i­ous fish-out-of-water com­e­dy sees a con­ser­v­a­tive Eng­lish but­ler forced to up sticks and decamp for the wilds of Amer­i­ca – all down to a gam­bling debt. This sequences effort­less­ly cuts through the com­e­dy with solemn shot of stir­ring patri­ot­ic rhetoric.

It is, of course, writ­ten into the statute books that all lists of this nature must include Bill Pullman’s rous­ing speech ahead of Inde­pen­dence Day’s cli­mac­tic sky bat­tle. The POTUS has been forcibly dis­placed from the White House by a pesky giant laser canon, and so opts to deliv­er his deci­sive bat­tle cry into a bull-horn while propped on the back of an air­port lug­gage car­ri­er. A leg­end, and a man of the people.

Frank Capra’s cin­e­ma is jam-packed with inspi­ra­tional speech­es, often polit­i­cal­ly charged, but this one, which leads to a fil­i­buster in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, is one of the most inspi­ra­tional. Jim­my Stew­art, as a wet-behind-the-ears back­wa­ter sen­a­tor, heads to the nation’s cap­i­tal to embrace the sharp polit­i­cal dis­course and gen­tle­man­ly rough and tum­ble of life on The Hill. What he finds is rank cor­rup­tion and vile greed, and so decides to take mat­ters into his own hands with a from-the-heart decla­ma­tion on the need for a pol­i­tics that’s pure from insti­tu­tion­al evil.

Was this one of those sad instances of a film arriv­ing just a lit­tle too late in the day to get the wheels of its Oscar cam­paign mov­ing? Or, was it a sign of the ingrained racism at the core of awards sea­son? Either way, one of Ava DuVernay’s top trumps here is the all-in per­for­mance by British actor David Oyelowo as Dr Mar­tin Luther King, who nails the man­ner­ism and deliv­ery style of the late free­dom fight­er so well, that his speech­es are akin to watch­ing the man him­self. If it’s not too glib to remark, they should’ve giv­en Ava the vote.

Gus Van Sant’s 2008 film puts view­ers into a strange, but nec­es­sary posi­tion: what if you’re watch­ing a per­son who, from all angles, doesn’t seem very nice, but when as you’re look­ing and lis­ten­ing, they’re dis­play­ing such mag­net­ism and such allure, you can’t help but soak up the words that they’re say­ing. Case in point, Sean Penn play­ing San Fran­cis­can gay rights activist Har­vey Milk. He’s superb in the role, whol­ly empa­thet­ic and com­plete­ly shed­ding away any IRL tough-guy bag­gage. His ​“I want to recruit you!” speech is one of the film’s ear­ly high points.

It’s a sad fact that, if you’re look­ing at the cur­rent race for the White House, War­ren Beatty’s 1998 film Bul­worth feels scar­i­ly pre­scient. It fol­lows a cor­rupt sen­a­tor who heads out on the cam­paign trail. He’s so riv­en with guilt and depres­sion that he’s tak­en a hit out on him­self. With death loom­ing, he heads to var­i­ous LA fundrais­ers and galas and he decides to tell it like it is. And in this case, he embraces the medi­um of hip-hop. Below is the moment in the film where he first strays from the script and decides to tell a black church con­gre­ga­tion why pol­i­tics has noth­ing to offer them.

Okay, so this is not offi­cial­ly a polit­i­cal speech, as it’s part of the famous Jim Gar­ri­son con­spir­a­cy tri­al. Regard­less, its out­come pret­ty much con­cerned the legit­i­ma­cy of the entire Amer­i­can polit­i­cal class. At this point in his career, peo­ple tend­ed to mock Kevin Cost­ner as a one-note actor, but the way he deliv­ers this rous­ing sum­ma­tion, where he reach­es the very verge of tears but just man­ages to pull him­self back from the edge, is a movie act­ing mas­ter­class. See the whole thing here in all its nine-minute glory.

They say it’s always good to end on a song, so what bet­ter way to round things off than to join Grouch Marx mak­ing sil­ly rhymes about total­i­tar­i­an oppres­sion? Con­cern­ing the leader of the state of Free­do­nia, the film pos­es the per­ti­nent ques­tion: what if absolute pow­er drove some men to com­pete and total idio­cy? As Groucho’s Rufus T Fire­fly lists the ways he plans to crush the spir­it of his peo­ple, and bray­ing aris­to­crats cheer him on. And what hap­pens to those who dis­obey him? ​“We stand ​’em up against the wall and pop goes the weasel!”