The Best Man

A film set at a party convention. A presidential candidate is to be chosen. Two names have come forward and the delegates have not decided. Russell comes from the state department. Clever, sardonic, a reader, and precisely for that nobody trusts him. Cantwell is a young senator. He speaks hard, campaigns on communism, and uses a crowd well. There is a third man between them. The former president Hockstader is dying and whose support he gives will decide it. From there the film takes place in hotel rooms. Corridors, telephones, counting delegates and bargaining. Each side has a file. There is a nervous breakdown in Russell's past. Cantwell has found it and is preparing to use it. There is something in Cantwell's past as well. An allegation from his army years, and it reaches Russell. What the narrative is interested in is not politics but the limit of use: all its tension lies in whether Russell will use the file he holds. Hockstader's position is plain. He tells him directly: there is no such thing as staying clean in politics. There is a line about the wife too. Russell and Alice live apart and have to appear together for the convention. The source is Gore Vidal's play and he adapted the screenplay himself; the text was written by someone who knew the political world from inside. The convention scenes are mixed with real footage. The production filmed at an actual party convention and the crowd scenes come from there. Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Edie Adams and Lee Tracy are in the cast. Franklin J. Schaffner directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes political drama and films that rest on dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone looking for action; the film is almost entirely interior and consists of talk.