Speechifying has become something of an ancient, if not lost, screen art. Think of great movie speeches and you think of a frenzied Jimmy Stewart on the Senate floor in 1939's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or Paul Muni delivering an impassioned courtroom plea in 1937's The Life of Emile Zola. Most of today's movies are more ironic than earnest, probably for fear of looking cornball. That would preclude moments of overt grandstanding, such as when Kirk Douglas, in 1960's Spartacus, proclaims, "I'd rather be here--a free man among brothers, facing a long march and a hard fight--than be the richest citizen in Rome!"

If there's a premier film orator today, though, it's son of Spartacus Michael Douglas, who gets to show off his public speaking skills to great effect in THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT (1995, Columbia TriStar, PG-13, priced for rental). Though he's more often squared his familiar jaw against all manner of femmes fatales (Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, Demi Moore in Disclosure), the actor has also had some prominent monologic moments.

Three words will serve as succinct evidence: "Greed is good." In Oliver Stone's WALL STREET (1987, FoxVideo, R, $19.98), a movie that loses more stock as the years go by, Douglas' address at a shareholders' meeting still holds up as a great alignment of writing and acting. Of course, the movie's audience isn't supposed to agree with the demonic logic by which Douglas' financial Mephistopheles, Gordon Gekko, advances his argument. Director-cowriter Stone means the speech as a summation of everything wrong with Reagan-era corporate piracy. But Douglas puts his character's ideas across with such seductive self-assurance that conservatives could easily ignore the irony of the scene and proclaim, Now, there was a guy with a lot on the ball.

A similar thing happens in the social-apocalypse epic FALLING DOWN (1993, Warner, R, $19.98), in which Douglas' character, an angry white male on a rampage through Los Angeles, decries fast-food joints (they're too strict about when they stop serving breakfast) and convenience stores (they won't give you change to make a phone call, and then they overcharge for a Coke) in between wrecking those fast-food joints and convenience stores. While Douglas' D-FENS--the character is referred to by the name on his vanity license plate--is not meant to be heroic, writer Ebbe Roe Smith and director Joel Schumacher are so hidebound by Hollywood tradition that they wrap their social commentary around a standard revenge fantasy, thereby making him a hero anyway. And although Douglas delivers his rants with gusto (culminating in the movie's only resonant line: "I'm the bad guy?"), they're ultimately just sound and fury.

By contrast, Douglas seems to waltz through The American President's featherweight scenario. In this determinedly bright romantic comedy, he plays widowed President Andrew Shepherd, who is charming, decent, and brilliant, though a bit of a waffler. When he falls in love with a feisty environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening), he has to face opposition from both his right-wing enemies and his own conscience.