There’s a moment during the second musical number in 1776 when star William Daniels, perhaps accidentally, manages to convey with just his body language the entire philosophical thrust of the film. Reluctantly joining in with Richard Henry Lee’s ridiculous song-and-dance tribute to the Lees of Virginia, complete with every Lee/ly pun you can imagine, John Adams is not happy. He thinks the whole enterprise is ridiculous, that Lee is ridiculous, that Franklin’s obvious flattery of Lee is embarrassing to all three of them. He, much like the historical John Adams, can’t pretend to anything and never could, but if it’ll inch the colonies closer to independence he’ll grit his teeth and dance and flatter and look ridiculous. Sometimes throwing off imperial power means doing things you don’t want to do.
1776 is a film about the many compromises of pride and integrity and values that were necessary for American independence. I can’t remember another movie musical that contains such rapid shifts in tone, from the absurdity of Benjamin Franklin doing high kicks to the dark, unresolved discomfort of Edward Rutledge condemning the north for their complicity in the slave trade. This version of events doesn’t allow for easy triumph or much in the way of national pride. The film ends with the signing of the declaration, and far from being an unqualified victory, the audience is left with no feeling more than relief.
Over and over, what strikes you is everything that had to be given up to get there, large and small. The story begins well into the long hot summer of ’76, when John Adams, after much prodding, finally agrees to let the popular Richard Henry Lee of Virginia propose independence. The reasoning for this in historical terms was complex, but the film streamlines things: everybody likes Lee. Nobody likes John Adams. It’s one of many compromises – necessary, but disappointing. Adams IS obnoxious, but also brilliant, honest, noble, and unexpectedly generous. What would America be, if he had never compromised, if he had been the acknowledged leader of the movement towards a break with England?
As an aside, though John Adams might be arguably unlikeable, William Daniels’ performance is flawless, and of the admittedly few screen portrayals of this particular founding father his is easily the best and the most accurate. His Adams is marvelously complex: brave, insecure, vain, obsessive, dictatorial, kind, dryly funny. He veers back and forth often between complete self-delusion and a hyper critical self awareness. You believe when watching that Thomas Jefferson, the founder with whom Adams is always most closely associated professionally and personally, would at one point dismiss Adams as insane and at another call him his dear friend, and the best man he knew. Adams had that effect on people, and Daniels played it beautifully. There are a number of dramatic interpretations of the life of John Adams in my collection, and I have some problems with most of them, but none with this.
The most obvious sacrifice, which gives 1776 most of its dramatic interest, was the elimination of Jefferson’s (in hindsight tepid) anti-slavery passages from the final draft of the Declaration. I say tepid because Jefferson attacked the importation of slaves to the Americas, laying the sin (not undeservedly) at the feet of the British Empire, while pointedly ignoring the status of the many people already in bondage in the colonies. We can realize now that the Declaration was a statement of principles in a broad sense; it was not a legal document and Jefferson at the time had only the vaguest of plans to free his own slaves, in much the same way someone today plans on giving up smoking or meat…sometime.
I don’t intend to make equivalent the horrors of slavery and a personal bad habit, at all. But based on all of my reading on Thomas Jefferson - and I’ve done quite a lot - this is how he saw his engagement in the slave trade: it was obviously distasteful, but extricating himself would be inconvenient, so he didn’t do it. I’ll save my essay on Jefferson’s character for another time, but suffice it to say, far from being the ‘American Sphinx,’ he was a just a very intelligent man who didn’t like doing anything that would make him uncomfortable. The world is full of them, and they’re easy to understand once you stop letting them off the hook.
In any case, this is hindsight. The members of the Continental Congress at the time were making things up as they went along, and they knew that the British Army was already promising American slaves their freedom in exchange for military service. They believed (with justification) that the Declaration was not only a signal of separation from England, but a statement on what kind of nation was being created. And Jefferson’s original draft posited a nation where slavery was not welcome, where slavery’s dismantling was all but assured.
By the midpoint of 1776 it’s clear that the southern delegates will not support independence while the anti-slavery language remains, and Adams, Franklin and Jefferson reluctantly decide they can live with its removal. It is to the film’s credit that they are not let off the hook for this; Franklin’s cheerful conviction that it will all work out in the end is rather chilling, and Jefferson’s defensive assertion that he has “already resolved” to free his own slaves is rightly played as a self-serving lie. It’s only Adams who sees things clearly, Adams who can say that a crime is being committed here, and only Adams who realizes that though the United States might eliminate slavery eventually, many men and women would die in bondage before it did.
Adams believed in independence at almost any cost, but he (ever obnoxious) wouldn’t stop asking – is this even worth it? Who are we to decide it is? What if there was another way? What if we hadn’t given up? What could have been done differently? Will anyone even remember what we sacrificed, what we did here? It’s Jefferson, appropriately enough, who sums up their dirty bargain when he asks Adams, sadly, “What else is there to do?”
It’s this weary, fearful resignation that lingers over the rest of the film, as the delegates finally sign their names in the last scene. Washington’s gloomy letters from the front had been a running gag, and his last is no different. There’s no triumphant closing song, only a tableau of men who are half convinced they signed their own death sentences and are not at all sure if the sacrifices were worth it. 1776, I think, argues that they were, but the questions linger, and it’s to the film’s credit that we’re never given any easy answers.
Recommend?
I would. It’s a bit of a mess, historically speaking – though I think it’s clear the changes were made intelligently. Martha Jefferson never came to Philadelphia, John Dickenson was not a sarcastic, conniving little shit and Richard Henry Lee was not a complete buffoon (actually far from). Some streamlining of arguments happens, and of course there were many more people there. It’s not a history lesson; I’d consider it more an entertainment for history buffs. Annoy your friends by pointing out the inaccuracies, that’s what I do.
William Daniels, as I said above, makes viewing worth it on his own. Howard Da Silva is an entertaining Ben Franklin, and Ken Howard appropriately plays Jefferson as the shy, gangly weirdo he probably was; he and Daniels have a nice rapport. Of the supporting cast, the always dependable southern gentleman John Collum is particularly effective as Edward Rutledge.
Clips:
I may not have conveyed above how sublimely goofy this movie is. This’ll do the trick:
But when they could rely on pure drama, they did: