The Best Fourth of July Movies To Watch This Weekend

It’s admittedly a little odd that the absolute #1 Turner Classic Movies Fourth of July biopic doesn’t chronicle the lives of any of the Founding Fathers or their spiritual descendants, but a guy who wrote a bunch of patriotic songs and once played Franklin Roosevelt in a musical. At the same time, it’s also fitting that the definitive American paean to patriotism is actually about a guy selling that stuff to the public with a lot of self-interested pizzazz—and all the more delightful that he’s played by James Cagney, who at the time was a gangster-picture mainstay hoping to return to his song-and-dance man roots. (The movie also reps a casual flex for director Michael Curtiz, who, no big deal, put this out the same year as Casablanca.) Much of the movie is a revue-like assortment of songs from George M. Cohan, performed by Cagney in character; combined with the standard biopic scenes, this pads the runtime past two hours. But if the literally flag-waving performances of “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” and “Over There” are unabashedly cornball, a least they also tacitly admit how much of their patriotic sentiments amount to unadulterated pageantry—and provide ample excuses for Cagney to tap-dance. Honestly, there are any number of noirs that probably better represent the overall spirit of America, but no classic film so accurately recreates the aesthetics of a small-town July 4th parade. It’s only missing some kids on bikes decorated with flags and streamers.

Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! and The Long, Hot Summer (1958)

20th Century Fox/Everett Collection

Real-life couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward had two different summer-themed movies out in 1958. Neither was actually released in the summertime—and neither of them are all-timer classics compared with the best Paul Newman movies—but they make for a solid Fourth of July double feature, especially starting with Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!, a neo-screwball Fourth of July comedy from famed director Leo McCarey, then at the tail-end of his career. In his youth, he directed comedy classics like Duck Soup and The Awful Truth, then made the less zany likes of Going My Way and An Affair to Remember. With Rally, he returned to a reoriented form of screwball located at the intersection of ‘40s rom-com classics, ‘50s CinemaScope opulence, ‘60s sex comedies, and just plain sitcoms (which is to say, multiple cast members from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis appear here).

Newman and Woodward play a classic couple-at-odds—over his cranked-up version of ‘50s horniness and her eagerness to serve her community by volunteering for as many committees as possible. When the U.S. Army comes to their small Long Island town hoping to man a top-secret project, she joins the protest and he joins the army’s PR effort, all complicated by the appearance of infidelity (which is to say, Joan Collins appears here). The Independence Day pageant she puts on is pretty offensive settlers-and-natives stuff (not to mention material generally now seen as Thanksgiving more than Fourth of July), and the eye-filling sets and colors of the time aren’t necessarily compatible with the necessary speed and wit of screwball. But the spectacle (which does, at least, include the costumed whites playing “natives” attacking real soldiers!) and movie stars add up to All-American time-capsule entertainment that does poke at the tension between self-interest and community cooperation.

The Long, Hot Summer is rather less zany, and far less of an Independence Day production, though it may actually evoke summer more vividly than its comedic counterpart. (Plus, at one point the characters attend an outdoor picnic event with patriotic decorations, which we can only assume is Fourth of July-related.) It combines material from several William Faulkner stories for an appropriately languid melodrama involving an opportunistic drifter (Newman), a ruthless businessman and patriarch (Orson Welles!), and his independent-minded daughter (Woodward). Rally ‘Round the Flag is more in the spirit of the holiday, but if you want to make it a Newman/Woodward double to see what else the famous duo was up to in ‘58, Summer can double the time spent in luminously colorful seasonal CinemaScope.

The Music Man (1962)

Warner Bros./Everett Collection