The Bill of Rights (1939) User Reviews

The need for those rights to be codified

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 9 February 2013]

A nice docudrama on the adaption of the first ten amendments to the Constitution would highly be in order as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison played a big part in that which occurred in 1789-1790 in the First Congress. But this is not the film for that. In fact only the last couple of minutes deal with that.

What we do see is the beginning of the rebellion as seen from the point of view of Virginia with the House of Burgesses defying the British royal governor Dunsmore as played by Moroni Olsen. The events aren't as dramatic as what was going on in Massachusetts, but the point is made that the fate of Massachusetts and those Puritan types in that colony could be that of the Virginia cavalier plantation owner people whom Jefferson and Madison represent. True then as it is today that Americans come from a variety of life experience.

The Bill Of Rights is a pleasant enough film which expresses the need for those rights to be codified. But not hardly the history of how they came to be in our Constitution.

Entertaining "cartoon" version of history

[Judger · 6/10 · 13 March 2005]

This little film was shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) as part of their "One Reel Wonders" series.

There was a lot of very good history told in this story of how the concepts enshrined in the Bill of Rights grew out of the American Revolution. However, the good history is wrapped in a broad cartoonish story with sweeping caricatures.

In a nutshell, Founding Fathers good and British rulers bad. Interestingly, the story does attempt to draw a distinction between the British rulers, embodied in the Virginia Governor and King George, and the British people by portraying Edmund Burke's famous speech before Parliament in support of the colonists.

With the possible exception of the "The Patriot", you don't see this type of raw patriotic fare anymore from Hollywood. And for good reason. Modern sensibilities have to be struck by the hypocrisy of the Virigina landed gentry demanding their freedom while denying freedom to the negro slaves.

However, I believe that the reluctance to paint history in such broad is strokes is one reason that children are woefully ignorant of history and so many Americans are unappreciative the great heritage that we all profit from.

Education must begin with the simplistic before it can address the complex. By focusing only on complex and contradictory issues, such as how Thomas Jefferson could call for the freeing slaves while not free many of his own, we lose sight of the obvious. From today's histories you would never know that prior to Jefferson there was no abolitionist movement at all and he was unquestionably its inspirational founder. The fact that he was a flawed man doesn't change that.

Simply speaking, yes indeed, the individual rights enshrined in the bill of rights are very good and the alternative can be very bad.

We could do worse than show this film to our kids.

Historical short given A-film values and Warner Bros. gloss...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 14 July 2008]

Another in the kind of historical shorts the major studios produced during the '30s and '40s, given Grade-A production values and using the studio's stock company of supporting players for the leading roles.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS begins in 1774 in Williamsburg, Virginia with the colonists insisting that while they "respect the motherland", they are demanding a bill of rights for "the home country". What follows is a fervent replay of American history with the Americans vs. the British, with the British considering ways to get the "hot-blooded colonists" to obey their commands.

Patrick Henry's famous "Give me liberty or give me death" (overacted by JOHN LITEL) is a part of the proceedings, as are other fragments of history including the Minute Men and ending in 1787 with rebellion among the colonists as they work on an Amendment to preserve "the Bill of Rights".

Sets and costumes are strictly Grade A in presentation but the acting is uniformly stiff and self-conscious. Best in the cast is earnest TED OSBORNE as James Madison, while the rest of the cast indulges in energetic but stilted acting under Crane Wilbur's direction.

WB's publicity department never missed an opportunity.

[horn-5 · 18 June 2006]

The world premiere (most shorts never had one) of this Vitaphone Technicolor featurette was held on August 31, 1939 at The National Conference of Christians and Jews at Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.

Warner's also arranged for a national radio broadcast of the events over the NBC Blue network, with many of the company's stars (including some big-names who weren't in this short) participating via a hook-up to the Los Angeles NBC studio.

Actually, considering the events going on in Europe at the time, the National Conference of Christians and Jews was exactly the right place to premiere this short. Those with short and/or selective memories and revisionist inclinations may disagree. That's okay. The Bill of Rights gives them that privilege.

A Stab At Historical Tale Telling

[theowinthrop · 6/10 · 21 January 2007]

This is entertaining enough as a short, but it's defect as a piece of history telling is glaring enough. It was shown on Saturday from 11:30 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. on the Turner Classic Film network (apparently it has been shown on there before). Basically it is giving some of the background for the creation of the Bill of Rights in the First ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, traced back to the Virginia Resolves of 1775. And it does (fortunately) show that Col. George Mason (John Hamilton - finally doing something important besides being Perry White of the Daily Planet) was strongly involved in the creation of the prototype (with Jefferson and Madison), though it fails to mention that Mason remained one of the key architects of the later Bill of Rights as well.

The problem of course is the mangling of the failure of the revolutionaries from Virginia to end slavery there. This has been addressed on the thread already, and the reminder that Jefferson was a flawed hero here, but he at least got some movement towards abolition started, is not a true one. Jefferson liked his lordly comforts until his death, and he did not free his slaves until he died. And actually he did not free all his slaves (like Washington did). Moreover, judging from his book NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, Jefferson had a distinctly low opinion of the African-Americans, even remarking that they had an unpleasant odor. This is hardly enlightened. Actually George Mason made sizable efforts to end slavery in Virginia and the South, and met with little support from Jefferson, Madison, and other Southern leaders.

The film makes Lord Dunsmuir (Moroni Olsen), the last Colonial Governor of Virginia, the villain of the piece. He is shown to be a total importer of the worst aspects of British tyranny (as set up by King George III), and setting off the Revolution in Virginia by seizing the gunpowder in the Williamsburg Arsenal, and transporting it to a British ship. This is true as far as it goes, but it leaves out one vital aspect - Dunsmuir decided to issue a proclamation freeing the slaves who would fight for the crown's rights. A huge number of slaves fled to Dunsmuir's ships, and a small civil war briefly occurred. Eventually Dunsmuir was forced to head for New York City but he took most of the slaves that joined his call to arms. In 1783, the surviving ex-slaves (including several belonging to General George Washington) were taken by the British vacating New York, and transported to Canada or England.

The acting was pretty good in the film, if a trifle self-conscious and stiff at times. The leads are good. One wishes more accuracy about the historic record was included. The business about Dunsmuir's ally Moreland (Leonard Mudie) setting up a gun that will be fired at whoever opens the doors of the emptied arsenal, and being forced to do that by a mob led by Russell Simpson, seems to be a dramatic piece of lying that I have yet to come across a reference to in any history book.

WB short

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 4 July 2023]

It's 1774 Williamsburg, Virginia. The Governor invites the leading lights of the colonies. He is shocked to find them rebellious. He finds them Americans.

It's a WB costume historical recreation short. It's in Technicolor. With war coming to Europe, this is obviously setting up the fight to come. WB had led the march to resist tyranny and this is probably another part of that mission. It's very simple and very short. It's very sincere. The acting is stoic and serious. It's aimed at the public with a grade school level of understanding. It is patriotic in a rallying the free world sort of way.

A Colorful History

[boblipton · 6/10 · 4 July 2021]

Here's another of the Warner Brothers Technicolor short subjects of the 1930s. Most of them, from GOOD MORNING EVE on seems more focused on showing off Technicolor at its most vivid than in telling a good story. A exception was the three or four historical pageants directed by Crane Wilbur, extolling the Bill of Rights, the signing of the Constitution, and so forth. Not that this is less of a color extravaganza, but the lighting and color choices are made to suggest contemporary paintings.

That was one of the advantages of Technicolor: its flexibility. Although the story telling here is rather stiff, it is a delight to look at.

This Is Terrible History

[Better_Sith_Than_Sorry · 3/10 · 31 July 2023]

I knew something was off right from the start, as this film opens in 1774 and portrays James Madison as a member of the Virginia Assembly. Uh, that is incorrect. Madison was never a member of the House of Burgesses before it was dissolved. This would be only the first of a tidal wave of inaccuracies, misleading anecdotes and half-truths that populate this 20 minute mess of a short. It's kind of remarkable how much they got wrong in so brief a time.

Here are more lowlights:

• The Virginians are shown rallying to the support of Boston after it was learned the British closed the port there and suspended some civil liberties. This is true enough, but it's portrayed as if the British did this solely because they are evil and despotic. No mention is made of the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in December 1773, and which was the reason why the British took those punitive actions. To watch this, the British did it because they hate Americans and that's all.

• British troops are shown trashing property and printing presses in Boston. Nothing is mentioned, however, of the Sons of Liberty "tarring and feathering" Loyalists, or of their destruction of several houses of government officials. The Sons of Liberty mob "destroyed Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson's furniture, wrecked the garden, tore out the windows, walls, wainscoting, tiles and even tore down the cupola on the roof" of his house. But eh, let's not talk about that lol.

• The "Fairfax Resolves" of 1774 and the "Virginia Declaration of Rights" of 1776 are represented here as being one document. Not so fast guys.

• The film shows Governor Dunmore dissolving the House of Burgesses and then stealing the colony's gunpowder virtually on the same day. In reality, the House was dissolved in June 1774 and the gunpowder wasn't seized until April 1775. The film also shows Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech given as a response to the seizing of the gunpowder, but again, wrong. That speech was delivered in March of 1775, a full month before Dunmore ordered the gunpowder seized.

• The flag of the Culpeper Minutemen is shown at this juncture but that militia didn't form until July 1775.

• The pistol 'booby trap' set in the powder magazine by the "evil" British is a complete fabrication.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. This short film is an absolute travesty and little represents 'what actually happened.' Adding to the weirdness, George Washington, who was present for many of these events, was never shown in the film; meanwhile, James Madison, who wasn't, is given a prominent place. I'm awarding it a few stars for the early use of color, the costumes, and what appears to be location filming in Colonial Williamsburg. The rest is just terribly misleading and inaccurate 'history.'

3/10. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: Definitely not. And contrary to what another reviewer wrote, our kids should not watch it either, lest they become as uneducated as we.

When Moses carried the Ten Commandments . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 1 June 2016]

. . . down from Mount Sinai, outlawing murder and theft, no killers and thieves accused him of exercising narrow-minded Presentism, as an excuse to perpetuate their Evil Deeds. Similarly, THE BILL OF RIGHTS' efforts to gloss over the tunnel vision of Colonial Virginian Fat Cat Racist White Hypocrites must be decried by ANY viewer, whether it's the 18th, 20th, or 22nd Century. As these Bewigged Slave Rapists such as Thomas Jefferson are depicted stuffing their jowls with greasy food and oiling their Forked Tongues with all manner of Booze, only one "slave" is in evidence (a doorman with the same demeanor of his counterpart in a 1940s Manhattan Mansion--it's probably the SAME actor!). Just as sex with a minor, or any stoned or otherwise unconscious person is rape, sex with a slave is exactly the same as sex with a Great Dane, since neither is legally a person capable of providing consent. THE BILL OF RIGHTS should be devoted to planning the leveling of Jefferson's Memorial, as well as yanking his smirking rapist's mug off our nickels and two dollar bills. It's time to toss Dolly Madison's cookies, too. Virginian George Washington does not appear here, and he also needs to be missing in action from our Capitol, his state, all his counties, etc.--plus our quarters and ones!