In this curious Depression fantasy, Walter Huston plays Judson Hammond, a callous politician who brings cynical power-mongering to the presidency during the grim thirties, turning his back on the country plagued by rampant homelessness and organized crime. While convalescing from an automobile accident, he experiences a visitation by the Archangel Gabriel and emerges reborn, determined to rid the U.S. of racketeering, eliminate unemployment, and create world peace. The Chief Executive suspends Congress, becoming not so much a Super-President as a user-friendly dictator. As a result, Gabriel Over the White House was slammed as being a fascist-inspired fable advancing a president who was part Roosevelt, part Hitler. The miraculous twist is that, while other films have speculated that the president is merely a puppet for greater interests, none have claimed him to be the spokesperson for an archangel. A political melodrama with vestiges of the gangster genre, the film nonetheless offers up starkly populist solutions that were most certainly being voiced during the Depression, including a million man march to the Capitol.-Steve Seid