Warning: This review contains spoilers!
“Advise & Consent” is very much a congressional movie, not presidential in focus. Only a few scenes take place in the Oval Office. Early on we are treated to a little civics lesson, explaining the complex role of the the vice president. On the one hand he is a member of the executive branch, not the legislative. Yet he can preside over the senate, even though he is not a member of it. In this role, the vice president is called the “President of the Senate.” Since he is not a senator, he cannot vote – unless there is a tie, in which case he can break it.
In this movie, the VP acts as the senate’s chief traffic cop, sitting in the chair wielding his gavel. In actual practice, of course, he almost never presides over the senate, unless it is expected that his vote may be needed, which happens rarely (though Vice President Pence has been doing a good bit of it recently). Even when the movie was made, most of the important work was done in committee, not on the floor of the senate. In this respect, the movie gives an unrealistic impression of the work of the legislative branch.
In other respects, “Advise & Consent” is still relevant to current events. For example, at his confirmation hearing, the nominee for Secretary of State (Henry Fonda) is asked, “Would you recommend a preventive attack? Hit the enemy before they could hit us?” His response: “No I wouldn’t recommend a preventive attack. I would first try to bargain, try to agree to some of their demands if they’d agree to some of ours…. I believe war must be avoided, but I don’t believe it can be avoided by rattling sabres.”
There is even a tea-party type senator (played by George Grizzard), though in this instance he is a left-winger trailed everywhere by a coterie of zombie-like supporters. His obnoxious behavior prompts the memorable line, “Fortunately our country always manages to survive patriots like you.”
Except for the senate chamber and the White House interiors, which were recreated in a Hollywood studio, “Advise & Consent” was filmed entirely on location. It’s a pleasure to see Washington as I remember it, without barriers or checkpoints or metal detectors, the way it used to be before everyone had to be patted down by security guards.
Cast
Charles Laughton, in his last role, plays what he was not – a drawling conservative from South Carolina. The commentary reveals that he modeled himself on Mississippi’s John Stennis, even going so far as to meet with him and have the senator read his lines into a tape recorder so he could mimic his speech patterns. Henry Fonda likewise modeled his performance on Adlai Stevenson.
Peter Lawford plays what he is – a member of the Kennedy clan, in the guise of a senator from Rhode Island. Casting him was meant as a sop to the president’s family, and it worked: They loved the movie.
Don Murray plays the Mormon senator, married but with a homosexual incident in his past he desperately wants to keep hidden. Here’s a detail I found curious: As the pressure on him builds, he has a tense scene with his wife in which he opens a bottle of Coke in a way I have never seen anyone else do: He holds the bottle low and pointing towards himself, not away. When the top comes off, there is no release, no pop or fizz. Contrast that with how a Coke usually gets opened in your typical commercial. I may be wrong, but I suspect Preminger uses this little incident to subtly (or subliminally) suggest something about the character’s sexuality.
Walter Pidgeon, looking very much like he belongs on Mt. Rushmore, turns in a solidly reliable performance.
Lew Ayres as the vice president does a nice job playing the role of the superfluous man who at the end of the final reel suddenly becomes the country’s most important leader.
Among the senators we see one female and one Hispanic; no blacks. According to the commentary, Preminger tried to persuade Martin Luther King to play the role of a senator, but he declined.
Drawbacks
One problem is that the story has to do a balancing act between high political intrigue and American government 101. Another is that the cast is top-heavy with stars anxious for screen time, which they naturally could not all get. Henry Fonda receives top billing, but his role is by no means the leading one. Even though a lot of fine acting must have ended up on the cutting room floor, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it is still much too long.
While it was somewhat unusual for a black and white movie to be filmed in Panavision, for me this does not qualify as a drawback – unlike the all too noticeable camera shadows, for example outside the Capitol building early on, and again during the Georgetown cocktail party. Another misplaced shadow falls on Laughton outside at night in front of the Washington Monument. When Brig Anderson (Don Murray) comes home late one evening and his wife turns on the little bedside lamp, the entire room is flooded with light.
A list of all the instances in which the camerawork is obtrusive and there are unexplained shadows would be long and tiresome. In general Sam Leavitt’s lighting is so artificial and complex it often calls attention to itself, which is a distraction. The same can be said of his work in “Anatomy of a Murder,” right from the opening shots. Could it be that these are not inadvertent but intentional – some touch of documentary realism, or some personal signature? Even if that is the case, the effect remains disconcerting.
Commentary
Dr. Drew Caspar, who introduces himself as the holder of the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock chair in American Film at USC’s School of Cinema and Television, reads a commentary that sounds a lot like a lecture he has recycled from the classroom. On the whole, it could be characterized as a mixed bag.
Let’s start with the good parts, of which there are many. He illustrates Preminger’s preference for long takes, and points out the tracking shots during the cocktail party scene. When Fonda tells his son to fib and say he’s not home, calling it a kind of Washington lie, this sets up the big lie that he will tell later. During the senate hearing, Preminger imitates the style of television coverage that was new then and common now. We learn that he preferred to use locals as extras, saying their presence gave the stars a grounding in reality and a feeling which they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
The commentary goes into some depth on the differences between the novel and film. For instance, though the book took a harder anti-Communist line, Preminger, himself more liberal, played it straight during the confrontation scene, not tipping his hand whether the liar is the rumpled character played by Meredith (based on Whittaker Chambers) or the one played by Fonda (based on “composed, handsome, confident” Alger Hiss, “a study in dignity, candor and authority” [Verne W. Newton: The Cambridge Spies, pg. 214]). Still, as the commentary points out, when Meredith dramatically enters the chamber, Preminger presents him off-center, thus visually underlining his mental instability – this is a man, we soon learn, who has had a nervous breakdown. By the way, Preminger rescued Meredith’s career after he had been banned for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. Overall, the director fought for freedom of expression and against censorship.
On the question of genre, Dr. Caspar calls it a metaphorical family melodrama, with the president as father, the senators as his children, and the Henry Fonda character as the outsider who stirs things up, resulting in the traumatization of one of them. He works up some enthusiasm when it comes to the courage it took to deal with the explosive theme of homosexuality. After the movie was made and some senator from Ohio (a real US politico, not an actor in the film) wanted to prohibit “Advise & Consent” from being shown abroad, Preminger smuggled a copy out of the country, just in case. After it was screened at Cannes, right-wingers denounced it as anti-American, and Hedda Hopper issued a call for “somebody with enough guts to stop it.”
Preminger did not follow the usual Hollywood practice of shooting first and then arranging for music later. Instead, he involved composer Jerry Fielding from the beginning. By the way, Fielding had earlier also taken the 5th before HUAC, which brought a halt to his career for some years. Eventually Dalton Trumbo recommended him to Preminger, who handed him the job on this film, thus enabling him to resume working (among other projects, he would later compose music to some episodes of the Star Trek TV series). Fielding also wrote the song we hear in the gay bar scene at Club 602, sung by Frank Sinatra on the juke box. Apparently it has no separate title and is known simply as “The Song from Advise & Consent.”
Finally, the commentary is rounded off with a discussion of Saul Bass’s title design, which features the dome of the Capitol opening up – or having its lid blown off.
Now for the other parts. Dr. Caspar provides information such as Preminger’s filmography that could be found in any relevant encyclopedia and does little to improve our understanding of this film. He subjects us to list after list of other films and awards.
Our guide has a notable weakness for clichés. Here is a selection: Laughton “tickled America’s funny bone” in one movie, “won America’s heart” in another. We are informed that the director “didn’t suffer fools gladly” and that something “put the bee in Preminger’s bonnet.” Henry Fonda specialized in playing characters “as honest as the day is long.” Laughton “looked like a sack of potatoes.” To save his career, Burgess Meredith “cleaned up his act,” that is, stopped espousing leftist causes. Walter Pidgeon’s career at this time is said to be “going great guns.”
Dr. Caspar reads all this in a rushed voice at times barely above a whisper. The professor spells out the word “auteur” for us, so we know it’s going to be on the exam. He pronounces “Nazi” like Naah-zee, makes two syllables out of “Seab” (short for “Seabright”), and calls Gore Vidal “Gorè.” He is ignorant of the past form of “wreak,” intoning that “Havoc is wrecked.” His pronunciation of “Sturm und Drang” could charitably be described as idiosyncratic. Other expressions come out of his mouth too slurred to be understandable. One wonders what Preminger would have made of an American PhD with this level of English. I give his commentary a B-.
© Hamilton Beck
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