Inherit the Wind

Inherit The Wind acutely captures the farcical Monkey Trial and offers the awesome talents of two double-Oscar winners, Tracy and March, in their only film together. Read full review

It is Inherit the Wind among all of Kramer's films that seems most relevant and still generates controversy. Read full review

A searing indictment of religious fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism. Inherit the Wind’s relevance continues beyond its immediate parallels with McCarthyism. Read full review

One of the most intelligent, respectable and entertaining motion pictures of this year. Read full review

This is a rousing and fascinating motion picture. Producer-director Stanley Kramer has held the action in tight check. Read full review

Tolerably gripping in its old-fashioned way, thanks chiefly to old pro performances from Tracy and March as the rival lawyers and ideologists, but rather let down by Kelly's inadequacy as the cynical journalist who is comfortably denounced as the real villain of the piece. Read full review

The case itself had so many dramatic elements that the movie can't help holding our attention, but it's a very crude piece of work, totally lacking in subtlety; what is meant to be a courtroom drama of ideas comes out as a caricature of a drama of ideas, and maddeningly, while watching we can't be sure what is based on historical fact and what is invention.

Spencer Tracy does his cuddly curmudgeon turn as Clarence Darrow; it's a lazy, vague performance, but its wit provides the only crack of light in the film's somber, gray overcast. Read full review