Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

talula1060 My only real criticism is Charles Laughton's performance. I realize I'm in the minority here, maybe even alone in this. See, I've enjoyed watching Laughton's performances since his early films if the 30s. He always energized every picture he appeared in. That's why I was so disappointed to see how I'll he had clearly become by this point. How acting is plodding and slow. I found myself frustrated whenever he started speaking. His accent was in and out and even when it was in, it was horribly done. I understand this was about 6 months before the cancer claimed his life. He just looks unhealthy which makes me sad and him hard to watch. I feel we could've done with an actor who was up to the task of this type of role. I don't feel Charles Laughton really was.

AaronCapenBanner Otto Preminger directed this(at the time)controversial political drama that stars Henry Fonda as a Secretary of State nominee who faces a difficult senate confirmation hearing led by young senator Brigham Anderson(played by Don Murray) who dislikes the nominee because of his rumored communist past, but after that is put to rest, another issue arises that could derail his chances, but a secret from the senator's own past may destroy him as well. Franchot Tone, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Lew Ayres. Burgess Meredith, Gene Tierney, and Charles Laughton costar. Reasonably interesting film has a fine cast though is too talky and too long, though the story is certainly daring for its time, and still sad.

funkyfry Taking on the world of Washington with the same ponderous and sober eye that he focused on jurisprudence in "Anatomy of a Murder", Preminger has styled a political drama that never seems false and never bores but also never really surprises or inspires.Half the fun is in trying to identify the real historical figures who provide the basis for the fiction. Offhand, I felt that Franchot Tone's President was similar to FDR, especially in how the situation develops with his nervous and self-doubting VP, played by Lew Ayres. Following that thread of thought, there seems to be a bit of Henry Wallace in Henry Fonda's Leffingwell, the nominee for Secretary of State. The film's main plot concerns the battle for Leffingwell's nomination, which eventually involves sordid blackmail regarding past homosexual affairs on the part of the junior Congressman from Utah (Don Murray). The anchor performances in the film come from Walter Pidgeon and Charles Laughton, who play a couple of grizzled Senate veterans locked in a sometimes subtle battle over the confirmation.All the performances are solid, even Gene Tierney's (sorry for the backhand compliment, Gene, but you deserve it..... what did Preminger have for her anyway?). She stands in for Mrs./Ms. Merriwether Post, even inhabiting her old house uptown. Peter Lawford is also surprisingly good as (this time not surprisingly) a thinly veiled John Kennedy stand-in (in his introductory scene, we observe a fashionably dressed blonde exiting his hotel room). There's a brief scene where Betty White plays a Senator from Kansas, which is a real treat for today's audiences.The film has a minimum of patriotic mumbo-jumbo, and for that we can be thankful.... Preminger does not fall into the classic Capra trap of condemning what he loves the most, and giving us a worshipful paean to a corrupt system after having shown us all the warts. But he does portray the gay blackmail angle in a way that's unfortunately homophobic, even if we try to give the film some slack for the change in the times. Why was Ray's (John Granger) friend depicted as such a slovenly pimp? Why was the gay bar depicted in such a seedy and shadowy manner (the boys at the bar lasciviously staring at Murray as he enters)? Why, oh why, did Murray have to push Granger into a gutter at the end of his scene? I understand that Murray was portraying some kind of self-loathing Mormon who had lapsed into homosexuality, but that was all the film gave us of Granger and it left plenty of space for the homophobes in the audience to walk out cheerful about seeing a queer having his face pushed in the mud.All in all, though, I liked the film. It's a bit dated... if you disagree with me, think about how different this film would be if it had been produced after Watergate and Vietnam. The film practically glows with its respect for the crusty old Senators played by Pidgeon and Laughton, reserving all its dire condemnation for the young upstart Senator played by George Grizzard with his "brain trust" -- the whiff of misplaced nostalgia is hard to avoid. Still, it is a diverting film full of excellent performances (including Grizzard's), so it is well worth watching at least once considering how few intelligent films have been produced dealing with our sordid national politics.

mformoviesandmore Now aged, script misses and acting is not strong.That's what I wrote in my own one-liner as record against this movie.Perhaps it was considered avant-garde when first shown. Now, every aspect of it is like the yellowed pages of a discarded book.I was particularly hoping for clever dialogue; something close to All About Eve, with the senate replacing the theatre.But although the film attempts to stage such scenes, the script is mostly functional. Another disappointment was the underuse of Henry Fonda. The younger senators were not played well; not by actors who could make me care.The reveal of the dark secret of the committee chair was (by today's standards) quite cheesy.Also, seen through 2012 eyes, the film holds no surprises in its execution.