But if it's all ancient history to you, you can amuse yourself applying current events to the serpentine, Machiavellian plot twists unraveling in Preminger's 1962 Washington. (Don't waste your time, though, searching for any character here who approximates Donald Trump.....no writer or director in his right mind could have envisioned a Trump presidency.......except maybe novelist Sinclair Lewis.....refer to the BQ's post on "It Can't Happen Here")
'Advise & Consent's President (Franchot Tone) has a crisis....his term isn't expiring, but he is. In rapidly failing health and wanting to continue his foreign policy of even-handed, peace-keeping negotiation, he nominates a prominent left-wing liberal senator (Henry Fonda) for Secretary Of State. That doesn't sit well with Fonda's most virulent Senate enemy, an ultra conservative, anti-communist super-patriot.....that would be none other than Charles Laughton, doing his slow-motion Foghorn Leghorn shtick as the South Carolina buddha. In his last film appearance, the only thing Laughton leaves out of his performance is snicking his tongue out to catch passing flies...
Let the games (and the back room back stabbing) begin......Laughton draws first blood, armed with the scoop on Fonda's brief fling with communism while teaching in college. The senate majority leader (Walter Pidgeon) marshals his forces to save Fonda's nomination. But to everyone's great distaste, the pro-Fonda allies include a wild card....a rabid dog junior senator (George Grizzard) eager to make a name for himself at any cost. This little Nixonian twerp flits around in the far corners of the Panavision frame until serving a crucial role in the final scenes.
In the lengthy film's episodic structure, Fonda and his communist crisis fall off the radar and the story focuses on the woebegone young senator (Don Murray) who's chairing the sub-committee on Fonda's confirmation. Trapped between ruthless opposing sides, devoted family man Murray finds himself blackmailed for a homosexual affair he had in the army.
And here's where Otto Preminger renewed his credentials as a oh-yes-I-did cinematic ground breaker.....having shocked audiences in his previous film 'Anatomy Of A Murder' with its court testimony about ejaculate-stained women's panties. Don Murray sneaks off to New York in search of his old army lover.....and recoils in horror at the sight (and first official Hollywood depiction) of.....gasp!!..... a gay bar. Murray races for a cab as if he's seen Dante's Inferno itself, shoving his onetime partner into a gutter puddle.....how's that for dramatic punctuation. (You can see how far movies have travelled......from this film's take on gays as hidden abominations all the way to a prominent singing, dancing gay character in Disney's 2017 "Beauty And The Beast" remake)
Before all this melodrama kicks in, Preminger always serves you a five course movie meal.....a cast teeming with beloved, familiar faces (Will Geer, Lew Ayres, Paul Ford, Burgess Meredith, and the still stunning Gene Tierney (star of the Preminger classic "Laura") as a Washington hostess)
There's gladiatorial goodness galore in the thrust and parry of the Senate floor fights......at one point Betty White takes the floor as the lone female Senator.....and recipient of a lame crack about her using her fairer sex as an advantage. The movie nimbly dances around its political duels, the dialogue carefully crafted with the usual vague tropes that simulate cautious diplomacy (in Fonda's Jimmy Carter-like subcommittee testimony) and hardcore, hawkish conservatism (Laughton's referring to Fonda's worldview as 'alien' to American values). Feel free to pick your own side. (Interesting side note: a few years later, a President played by Frederic March adopts much the same views as Fonda, in "Seven Days In May"......and March almost suffers a military coup......)
In more civilized, normal times, we might have judged 'Advise & Consent's breathless, surprising climax (involving the role call on Fonda's nomination) as far fetched and ridiculous. Not anymore......with the reality of an unhinged psychopath in the White House, Preminger's fictional upheavals seem downright comforting. The country survives.....no one tells ludicrous lies about the previous President.....and Gene Tierney's still beautiful. So BQ casts a 4 star vote (****) In Otto's Washington, they may be shifty.....but at least nobody's crazy.
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