Advise & Consent

Preminger's Washington film, from Allen Drury's Pulitzer-winning novel. A dying president nominates a contentious figure as Secretary of State, and the Senate must confirm him. From there the film proceeds almost as procedural documentary: committee hearings, corridor bargaining, vote counting, leaks to the press and blackmail. Preminger takes no side; both the nominee's supporters and his opponents are working their own accounts, and politics is treated as mechanics rather than morality. Its place in film history comes from one scene: a sequence set inside a gay bar, used for blackmail, is counted among the first times Hollywood put such a place on screen, and it was an open challenge to the production code of the day. Henry Fonda plays the nominee and Charles Laughton the southern senator, in what was Laughton's last film. Walter Pidgeon, Don Murray and Gene Tierney are also in it. Close to two and a half hours, and driven by talk. Still one of the best things to watch on how American politics actually functions, and heavy going for anyone who wants incident.