ADVISE AND CONSENT (79)

Directed by: Otto Preminger (1962)

Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Henry Fonda

The Pitch: The US President tries to appoint a controversial new Secretary of State, leading to intrigue and mud-slinging as the nomination goes to the Senate for approval.

Theo Sez: Interesting to compare this with the roughly contemporaneous THE BEST MAN, another warts-and-all look at American politics. Both feature the same skeletons in politicians' closets - Communism and homosexuality (so much more colourful than boring old adultery) - but the Gore Vidal-scripted MAN feels rough and acrid, right down to its high-contrast photography, a bitchy insider's look at the political circus ; whereas this, though it claims to be "lifting the lid off Washington" (the opening credits have the Capitol dome opening up to reveal the main title), is a glossy adaptation of a lengthy, portentous bestseller - if it's Telling It Like It Is it's not because it wants to mock but merely for our edification, the public-interest argument familiar from today's tabloids. Fortunately, Preminger has always been more showman than moralist (or perhaps a showman in the guise of a moralist), and he's mainly concerned with guiding his veteran cast through a plot chock-full of juicy twists - indeed, the whole film is so solidly-packed you might wish it were even longer than its 140 minutes (at least if you're unfamiliar with EXODUS and THE CARDINAL, the leviathans Preminger made on either side of this). The result is hammy as hell but irrepressibly entertaining - not least because, though it pays lip-service to the bloated inclusiveness of its airport-novel source (glancing at the politicians' families and off-duty lives), it actually concentrates almost entirely on their working hours, and specifically on the procedural detail of how the Senate does business. It creates a perfectly stylised surface - a roundelay of speeches, objections and "Will the Senator yield?"s - implicitly contrasted with the tawdry messiness beneath : a memorable scene has the majority leader making a fine speech on the Senate floor, replete with references to the glory of the US Constitution - so he can camouflage the fact that he's actually improvising wildly, buying time so his minions can strike a deal with a recalcitrant Senator before the vote. It doesn't exactly transcend its tabloid muck-raking but it does use it, making some important - even revolutionary - points if you can look at the bigger picture ; in the same kind of way that, though its treatment of homosexuality is offensive by today's standards (especially when our hero admits he was led astray in his youth but he's "normal" now), it does nonetheless feature the first gay bar ever seen in a Hollywood movie.