Disraeli (1929)
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Disraeli Movie Review
Disraeli is a 1929 historical film directed by Alfred E. Green and starring George Arliss. It’s a middling effort which has its moments, but is overall weak.
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“A man who never makes jokes is a standing joke to the world“
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Now this story is very boring admittedly. It actually sounds rather interesting and fun on paper with the whole spy element in it, but the execution is so flat that the film never took off in terms of entertainment values.
It is a very early sound film and thus it feels stuck in 1929 meaning that it feels like a silent film, and a very boring silent film, with just the added sound and nothing more than that. The film lacks the epic and cinematic quality needed for this kind of story and is just your regular, dated old-fashioned historical drama that is overly stagey and theatrical in its approach to satisfy modern audiences.
I found the female characters rather interesting here and of course the protagonist is the standout as the best developed of the bunch. Certainly the film’s highlights are the scenes between Disraeli and these spy women as they are actually quite a lot of fun and very playful. It’s a shame that the rest of the film is so dry and energy-ridden in comparison
Disraeli is famous for bringing George Arliss an Oscar for Best Actor. And even though I personally wouldn’t pick him, I have to say that I do understand this decision. He is overly theatrical, but mostly very good for this period and he excelled at playing this weird, gentle politician with some interesting quirks in his speech pattern. It’s not a great performance, but it’s certainly pretty good and the best reason to see this entire film.
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But the other two nominations for Writing and Best Picture are simply ludicrous as the film is badly written and certainly not among the best films of the year. It is actually solid in dialogue and with memorable interiors, but the cinematography is otherwise too static, the film needed a more cinematic approach and it’s boring in its slow pace and too talkative. The Academy here began their bias toward boring biopics as this is the first such picture to be heavily Oscar nominated.
Disraeli does have a couple of playful, amusing sequences here and there and George Arliss is memorable and very good in his Oscar-winning performance, but the story is told in the most basic, flat manner possible, acting as a dry historical lesson. It lacks a cinematic approach and it’s overly talkative and stagey leading to the first undeservedly Oscar nominated biopic that unfortunately paved the way for countless others to follow.
