Point of Order is a 1964 film directed by Emile de Antonio. It is a documentary about the dramatic Army-McCarthy hearings
of 1954.
United States Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), once an obscure junior member of the body, had spent the previous four years making himself famous by fanning the flames of the Red Scare, hurling wild, unsubstantiated accusations of Communist infiltration of various organs of the United States government. By 1953 he'd begun investigating the U.S. Army, which hit back by accusing McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of attempting to obtain special favors for one G. David Schine, a former McCarthy staffer and close friend of Cohn's who had gotten drafted into the Army.
McCarthy's own subcommittee met to investigate the various charges. The hearings, which lasted over a month, were broadcast live on national television. This film consists in its entirety of clips from the hearings, with McCarthy and his enemies on the committee—most notably Stuart Symington (D-Missouri)—flinging accusations back and forth. Things get nastier and nastier as McCarthy gets more personal, while Joseph Welch, special counsel for the Army, delivers a ringing condemnation of the senator.
Tropes:
- Documentary: Of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, with clips selected to make a surprisingly riveting drama.
- Glasses Pull: Joseph Welch does this as he gets wound up during the "have you no decency" speech.
- Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: Congressional investigative committees were at least a century old by this point, but the Army-McCarthy hearings, a month-long drama on national television, were the Trope Maker in the public consciousness. This one was a peculiar example in that Joe McCarthy was both on the committee and a target of the committee; at one point he leaves his spot on the committee table to testify under oath.
- Narrator: Only at the beginning, in which a narrator sketches out what everybody was arguing about and who G. David Schine was. After those introductory remarks the film continues with nothing but clips from the hearings, occasionally with chyrons to explain what the next segment was about.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The first sentence of the movie is the narrator saying "Everything you are about to see actually happened."
- Stock Footage: The entire film, which is all clips from the television broadcasts of the hearings.
- Title Drop: "Point of order" is legal jargon for a moment in which a member of a deliberate body interjects to point out a violation of the rules of order or debate. Multiple senators say this in the film, including McCarthy several times as he butts in to other senators examining witnesses.
- Video Credits: The film opens with a montage of still photos of all the principal players, as audio clips of each person talking in the hearings plays. The sequence ends with a still of McCarthy that switches to live action as McCarthy launches into a speech.
- Young Future Famous People: Robert F. Kennedy, then a counsel to the Democratic minority on the committee, can be seen sitting behind the senators at several points, and is mentioned by name at one point as one of the people who would have had access to committee files.
