Rating: 
Summary: Tracy at his passionate best! Interesting cameos to look for
Review: A wonderful snapshot of society then (and now) dealing with, essentially, reconciling faith vs. science in a small town classroom. Spencer Tracy is at his passionate best portraying Clarence Darrow, Chicago attorney, defending Dick Yorks right to teach Darwinian Theory in his science class.
Rating:
Summary: A unforgettable tour de force and superb script!
Review: This film is a triumph against the intolerance and the dark sides of the reason. The dreams of the reason produce monsters.
The generated legal battle between a Mathew Brady the hard fan religious and politician and Henry Drummond an opened mind lawyer about the Darwin ideas , keep full intensity all the film.
This historical process lets you thinking about the imaginary circunstance about what would the destiny of USA if Brady would have been President?
Spencer Tracy and Frederic March are like the alpha and the omega in this match . One timeless classic film in any age.
Don't even doubt it. This film is for you and for a wide target in the social spectre.
A must and a winner movie!
Rating: 
Summary: DON'T SLIP ON THIS BANANA PEEL!
Review:
Last weekend I rented INHERIT THE WIND to see for myself if it was really as bad as I'd heard. It was. I am astounded to find how many reviewers have excused its deviation from fact under the banner of "entertainment." It's no wonder this country's in such sad shape when its citizens can't discern entertainment from pure propaganda. Here's a clue folks : when a movie presents a supposedly intellectual argument, but paints EVERY SINGLE MEMBER on one side of that argument as a buffoon maroon, but shows the other team as thoughtful, open-minded, and humanitarian, you can bet the farm that you're being propagandized! (Hardly sympathetic to both views; in actuality, Clarence Darrow called Christianity, Bryan's "fool religion.") The superstupids here have equated the movie with an indictment of the horrors of "McCarthyism." I've got a lot to say about the horrors of "McCarthyism" too, but not here; you can go to my Amazon Personal Page for that - it's waiting for you there.
INHERIT THE WIND pretends to portray the famous 1925 Scopes 'Monkey Trial' with a "little" dramatic license. John Scopes is renamed Bert Cates (Dick York), Darrow becomes Drummond (Spencer Tracy), William Jennings Bryan becomes Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) and Dayton, Tennessee becomes Hillsboro, Tennessee. The playwrights, Jerome Lawrence & Robert Lee, did not alter the names because they thought they could improve on them, but so they could slander without fear of a libel lawsuit. The idea was to distort the truth & present it as "entertainment", knowing that over time, the drama will become accepted as factual by the masses. All of the Christians (believing in "Creationism") in the movie are portrayed as emotionally-overwrought, brain-dead bigots. Paint any other group with such a broad brush and you'll be in court for the rest of your life, but here in Amerika, it's always "open season" on Christians (amongst whom I do not number myself due to major theological differences.) If you're interested in comparing the events portrayed in the movie, INHERIT THE WIND with the "REALITY" of the 1925 'Monkey Trial', to see if we can't detect some deliberate dishonesty, click on my name above, and go to my Amazon guide called, "SO YOU WANT TO...STOP FALLING FOR SPENCER TRACY'S MONKEY BUSINESS!" You'll be surprised at how seriously the movie distorted the facts in order to condition people toward the dogma of Darwinism!
Rating:
Summary: Alternate Title: Stanley Kramer vs. God
Review: Stanley Kramer was a liberal member of the hollywood elite
who hated america. He also hated God. And this was his
anti-God epic. Its set in a courtroom, but for all the justice
and law in the film, it might as well be a courtroom in
Stalin's russia or Saddam Hussien's Iraq.
From beginning to end, the facts in this film are changed to
fit the message. Which is that religion, god and anyone
who isn't at minimum an agnostic or (better) an Atheist
is a clown and a fool and probably in need of a re-education
camp.
What you never see in this movie, for example, is the case
that Bryan made in various forums against the social implications
of Darwinism. The liberals and agnostics were not simply
concerned with Darwinism as science, but Darwinism as a
philosophy of life. In that philosphy, the concept of man and
morality, was replaced by the iron law called "survival of the
fittest" or as the never-mentioned alternate title of
Darwin's book "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". Darwinism was the phiosophical basis
of Social Darwinism, Eugenics and many sick ideologies based
on the concept that all human life was a struggle for
preservation of race with no rules.
We also don't see agnostic Clarence Darrow rampaging through
the courtroom demanding that the Bible be removed from the
countroom and that no one should dare to pray in his presence.
Kramer makes Darrow into the good rational nice man. The good
man compared to Bryan the raving irrational lunatic who ideas
(as created by Stanley Kramer) are obviously insane.
Kramer also has no sense of the irony of the absurdity of
using a courtroom to decide issues of religious belief and
science. Its not the place of any court to decide matters
of science. The court can decide if a law restricting the
teaching of a subject is valid in the broad sense, but a
court cannot decide or place a value on a specific subject
or announce to the world that evolution is truth.
The abusurdity of the case is that any decision in the matter
that touches on the issue of evolution itself pushes the
court toward an establishment of religion. If the court rules
one way, it has endosed christianity, if it rules the other,
it has made a move against christianity.
The core of the film takes all the life and complexities out
of Byran. He is reduced to a pompous demagog who is fed
arguments by Stanley Kramer while the real words of the man
are forgotten.
Meanwhile, real-life drunken moral degenerate adulterer
Spencer Tracy is played up as the kindly "good american" home
spun man of the people who is the heart of good sense and
reason. His Darrow is about as far from the real thing as
its possible to get.
It would have been possible to make a good film about this
subject. But to do so, the film-maker and writer has to
respect both sides of the arguement at a minimum enough
so that both are allowed to make their case.
But what Stanley Kramer set out to do was to make a vicious,
untrue film where he got to ridicule his enemy (religious
people, people in middle america, ministers and anyone
who isn't agnostic or atheist) while the opposing side was
gagged and locked out of the courtroom.
Rating:
Summary: The defense objects...
Review: I respectfully take issue with some of the comments by Louise O'Connor of the UK. There is no reason to feel "cheated" by any differences between this play and the historical realities of the Scopes trial. This is not a docu-drama, it is intentionally fictional -- which is precisely why the names Scopes, Darrow, Bryan, and Mencken are not used.
On the other hand, I believe this story is far more faithful to the Dayton trial than Ms. O'Connor gives credit for. The courtroom scenes are accurate, practically word for word, even down to little details like, "Do you ever think about the things you DO think about?" The real judge actually did rule out any scientific testimony, just like in the movie, and Scopes was convicted and fined $100. For a film that makes no claim to be anything other than fiction, that's not bad.
I don't agree that the Brady character is a bigot. He is introduced as a champion of the rights of women and "common folk," and on two occasions we see him diffusing the town's lynch-mob hostility. He does display a certain ruthlessness in the courtroom, but then again, so does Drummond. This is a high-stakes war, and war is hell.
While it is true that Scopes went into this with his eyes open (as does Cates, by the way), I very much object to the use of the term "put-up job," which rather trivializes the whole affair. Many of history's great heroes of civil liberties, from Moses to Gandhi, have deliberately provoked the wrath of the authorities, as the only means of confronting injustice. If there were less lofty motives on the part of some, that does not diminish the importance of this case.
Notwithstanding these points, I join Ms. O'Connor in her overall praise of the film.
Lastly, I would like to echo the observation of the Amazon reviewer, who laments that the same ignorance and intolerance of 1925 are still with us today. And with President "Nukulur" in the White House, I'm afraid things won't be getting better anytime soon.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, intelligent, and still relevent
Review: This movie combines amazing actors with an incredible script to aptly portray an important moment in American history. This is not just a movie you will learn from, it is a movie that will make you laugh and give you great new insight into current political and religious debates regarding creationism, morality and civil liberties. Besides which, there is nothing quite like the combination of an upstanding lawyer and a cynical journalist battling a majority blinded by prejudice to put a smile on my face. It is the formula of a great many classics, and one that never seems to fail.
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: Um grande filme que mostra o fundamentalismo dos americanos retrógrados quanto à educação. Eu recomendo a todos os que querem ser mais que repetidores de textos antigos e que não sabem sequer o seu significado, uma vez que não sabem ler nem grego e nem hebraico.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Boring at Best
Review: This movie is terrible. When people make a movie, you assume they would try to make it entertaining at the very Least. Don't waste your time viewing this film. It lasts way too long and you'll be happy when its over. Even if you do like the movie, it has a terrible ending. Hardly any of the conflicts are solved, and you're left with a feeling of disgust. That is only if you manage to make it through the entire movie. The songs in it as well are way too long and sound terrible. To sum it up, this movie is terrible.
Rating:
Summary: A LITTLE BACKGROUND
Review: As previous reviewers have noted, _INHERIT THE WIND_ is a work of fiction that is based on what came to be known as "The Scopes Monkey Trial." Also previously noted is the fact that Spencer Tracy, as Henry Drummond, the character adapted from the real life Clarence Darrow, and Frederic March, playing the role of Matthew Harrison Brady, whose character is based on William Jennings Bryan, engage in a carefully choreographed and outstandingly acted "pas de deux" that, to this day, has rarely been matched in any movie.It should be understood that this is a work of fiction, and is not meant to duplicate the facts of the Scopes trial. That's why the names have been changed -- to allow literary license for dramatic purposes. With this as background, one needs to understand the political climate that prevailed when the play from which the movie was adapted was written. The play was written in 1950, in the middle of what has come to be known as the "McCarthy Era." The anti-Communist hysteria of the time was seen by many as a threat to intellectual freedom. It was politically dangerous, at that time, to directly take on those threats to freedom of ideas, so the playwrites (Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee) came up with the idea of using the Scopes Trial, which was safely in the past, as a vehicle to express the importance of the constitutional guarantees of such things as freedom of speech. That the play they wrote in 1950, and its 1960 movie version, were of such dramatic intensity was just icing on the cake. I think that looking at _INHERIT THE WIND_ from the standpoint of historical perspective should do away with some reviewers beliefs that it is some sort of atheistic plot to challenge their belief systems. Also, repeating myself, I believe that it is important to realize that it is a work of fiction and need not accurately reflect the details of the real trial. It's worth seeing from several perspectives. As a well acted movie; as one that creates an atmosphere that makes the viewer feel that he is in that hot, humid courtroom; and as one that expresses how important our freedoms really are.
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