# Liberty at the Movies **URL:** **By** David Boaz **Published:** June 20, 2005 --- David Boaz highlights movies with strong themes of liberty. A few years back, I [wrote about](http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-24-01.html) the libertarian themes of many of the movies nominated for Oscars. Now, for the summer, I thought I'd recommend some all-time favorite libertarian movies. I'm not going to discuss documentaries or educational films such as _The Incredible Bread Machine, Waco: The Rules of Engagement_, or John Stossel's superb ABC specials. Today's topic is libertarian movies from Hollywood -- and there have been more than you might think. _Shenandoah_, a 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart, is often regarded as the best libertarian film Hollywood ever made. Stewart is a Virginia farmer who wants to stay out of the Civil War. Not our fight, he tells his sons. He refuses to let the state take his sons, or his horses, for war. Inevitably, though, his family is drawn into the war raging around them, and the movie becomes very sad. I cried when I was 11 years old, and I teared up again when I saw it recently. This is a powerful movie about independence, self-reliance, individualism, and the horrors of war. War may be the most awful thing men do, but slavery is also a contender for that title. Steven Spielberg's _Amistad_ (1997) tells a fascinating story about a ship full of Africans who turned up in New England in 1839. The question: Under American law, are they slaves? A long legal battle ensues, going up to the Supreme Court. Libertarians like to joke about lawyers. Sometimes we even quote the Shakespeare line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" -- not realizing that that line was said by a killer who understood that the law stands in the way of would-be tyrants. _Amistad_ gives us a picture of a society governed by law; even the vile institution of slavery was subject to the rule of law. And when the former president, John Quincy Adams, makes his argument before the Supreme Court, it should inspire us all to appreciate the law that protects our freedom. Lawyers play an important role in two other fine libertarian films. _The Castle_ was produced in Australia in 1997 but reached the United States in 1999. It's a very funny film about a character who thinks that living near the airport is just great. He even likes looking up at the massive power lines near his house because they remind him of what man can accomplish. Shades of Ayn Rand! Anyway, a man's home is his castle, and the protagonist is shocked when the airport decides to seize his property to extend its runway. He fights the system to no avail until a smooth, well-dressed lawyer -- way out of the lead character's league -- shows up and offers to take his case. Again we see powerful interests forced to defend themselves in a law-governed society. A nice defense of private property, and very funny to boot. That same season in 1999 I also enjoyed _The Winslow Boy_, a David Mamet remake of a Terrence Rattigan play/movie from 1948. Despite a very different atmosphere -- a stuffy, bourgeois family in Victorian England vs. a comic contemporary Australian family -- it has two things in common with _The Castle_: a proud father who will do anything to defend his home and family, and a distinguished British lawyer who comes to the family's aid. Mr. Winslow's teenage son is expelled from the Naval Academy. Convinced his son is innocent, Winslow challenges the expulsion. When the Academy refuses any sort of due process, Winslow exhausts his life savings in a fight through the courts. The theme is the right of every person in a decent society to justice. _So Big_ (1953) stars Jane Wyman as a wealthy young woman suddenly delivered into poverty. She becomes a teacher, marries a farmer, has a son, loses her husband, and must run the farm on her own, at a time when women didn't do that. It's an inspiring story of self-reliance, and the disappointment she feels when her son chooses money and society over the architecture he loves. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, the screenplay sounds almost Randian at times. Don't see the 1932 version starring Barbara Stanwyck; it's flat and boring. The difference is unbelievable. _The Palermo Connection_ (1990) is an odd Italian-made movie (but in English) cowritten by Gore Vidal. New York city councilman Jim Belushi runs for mayor on a platform to legalize drugs and take the profits out of the drug trade. The Mafia isn't happy. His life is threatened. So he decides to go on a honeymoon, in the middle of his campaign -- to Sicily. I said it was odd. But interesting, and very pointed. _Pacific Heights_ (1990) is a thriller that is almost a documentary on the horrors of landlord-tenant law. A young couple buys a big house in San Francisco and rents an apartment to a young man. He never pays them, and they can't get him out, and then things get really scary. The lawyer lectures the couple -- and the audience -- on how "of course you're right, but you'll never win." I just knew this happened to someone -- maybe the screenwriter or someone he knew. Sure enough, when Cato published William Tucker's book _Rent Control, Zoning, and Affordable Housing_, and I asked _Pacific Heights_ director John Schlesinger for a jacket blurb, he readily agreed to say "If you thought _Pacific Heights_ was fiction, you need to read this book"; and he told me that the screenwriter had a relative who had gone through a tenant nightmare. Finally, I'll mention _My Beautiful Laundrette_, made for British television in 1985. What's interesting about this film is that novelist/screenwriter Hanif Kureishi thought he was making a savage indictment of Thatcherite capitalism. But to me, the good characters in the movie -- white and Pakistani, gay and straight -- are the ones who work for a living, and the bad characters are clearly the whining socialist immigrant intellectual, who doesn't like his son opening a small business, and the British thugs who try to intimidate the young Pakistani businessman. My favorite line: The enterprising brother of the layabout intellectual takes a young working-class Briton with him to evict some deadbeat tenants. The young Brit suggests that it's surprising the Pakistani businessman would be evicting people of color. And the businessman says, "I'm a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani. There is no question of race in the new enterprise culture." I think Kureishi thinks that's a bad attitude. The joke's on him. More information about many of these movies can be found in [_Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film and Video: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium_](http://www.missliberty.com/) .