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Advise & Consent Movie Review

Advise & Consent is a 1962 political courtroom drama film directed by Otto Preminger and starring Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton among others. It’s a flawed, but interesting film.

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“What I did was for the good of the country.

Fortunately, our country always manages to survive patriots like you“

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A controversial presidential nomination threatens the careers of several prominent politicians. Otto Preminger is renowned for his very dark, sincere and then revolutionary takes on serious issues that were highly controversial during this period. In this movie he showcased once again his brilliance in executing dialogue, characterization and strong acting performances, but the movie was a far cry from his much better courtroom drama ‘Anatomy of a Murder’.

My main issue with this film is its slow pace and uneven structure. Given that it’s over two hours long and that its pace was so sluggish, the movie was thus never as engaging as I’d hoped it would be. It lacked momentum throughout the majority of its runtime and it was in serious need of energy, conviction and thrill in its approach.

With that being said, this was still a rather modern film for the time. It depicted everything that goes on in political candidate processes, including blackmail. The Don Murray character is a gay politician who eventually kills himself due to pressures about his personal life, which makes him a typically tragic gay character, but still the very presence of homosexuality as subject matter in this 1962 movie is mind-blowing. It just goes to show how Preminger was above his time when it comes to social issues.

This is a stacked film when it comes to its performers. It even has a Betty White cameo in the first half, which was lovely to witness. Peter Lawford, Franchot Tone and Walter Pidgeon all delivered strong work, but Henry Fonda is the highlight here along with Charles Laughton, who here had one of his best roles in his latter period of his career.

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Advise & Consent benefits from strong cinematography, great score that is at times quite suspenseful and terrific dialogue. It also has superb themes, but it doesn’t tackle them with full conviction or detail, which was typical for this tamer era. This is still a courtroom drama despite not being set in a courtroom because it has that confined element with these politicians shouting at each other.