1962 - ADVICE AND CONSENT, dated political drama but very entertaining

One of the better Otto Preminger films and he doesn't have a lot of good ones.  Advice and Consent is set in early 1960's Washington DC.  The story comes out of the President's desire to appoint a liberal to the Secretary of State position.  This starts a whole series of political maneuverings between the Democratic and Republican Senate.  Back in the 1960's being a "Liberal" was code for Communist.  Of course in today's political climate you could replace the word liberal with "immigrant."  

Henry Fonda is the Secretary of State candidate who seems to good to be true.  Walter Pidgeon is the Senate Majority Leader charged with getting him approved by the Senate. Charles Laughton (in his final performance before his death) plays a clever Republican Southern Senator out to defeat the nomination.  Actually the whole film is fairly well cast and it includes one of Preminger's favorite actors Burgess Meredith in a small role.

The film certainly has it's dated aspects particularly in it's treatment of as it was called back then homosexuality.  Preminger was a noted liberal but in the scenes set in a gay bar, there is certainly a large amount of sensationalized leering going on.

 

Preminger was also what was called an independent producer who for the most part kept complete control over his productions.  In fact Burgess Meredith has mentioned that between camera setups Preminger would be at his desk issuing paychecks for the cast and crew.  Preminger liked to shoot on location as much as possible so we get lots of vintage shots of 1960's Washington D.C.  He also liked to employ long extended takes.  For this film veteran cinematographer Sam Leavitt executed them with a high degree of skill considering on location photography isn't always the easiest thing to photograph.  At times Advice and Consent has the look of a documentary.  

 

Advice and Consent is a good political film which holds the viewer's interest with all the shenanigans that the senators have going on.  Does it portray a true picture of Washington D.C?  Probably not but it is a very entertaining political drama

Written by veteran screenwriter Wendell Mayes, the running time is 138 minutes.

1947 - FOREVER AMBER, some sort of English soap opera

A trashy novel about an English slut dressed up with lots of 20th Century Fox production money and filmed in 1940's technicolor.  

Clearly the idea was to do a version of Gone With The Wind set in 17th century England.  The audience is supposed to be interested in the social climbing adventures of one Amber St. Clair a woman who sleeps her way up to social status and power.  However since this was filmed in the 1940's all that sex stuff was pretty much implied

What you get in this picture is American actress Linda Darnell playing an English woman.  Darnell doesn't even attempt an accent.  Come to think of it the cast, a mixture of British and American actors and the director Otto Preminger didn't seem to sweat all of that dialect stuff.

This is the kind of film where the men run around in those goofy 17th century wigs and looking like a bunch of fops as they say.  The women heave their bosoms and Amber gets her comeuppance for being a naughty girl.  The whole thing is watchable only for the sets and a decent music score from David Raskin.

138 minutes, written by Philip Dunne and Ring Lardner Jr.

1965 - IN HARM'S WAY, Otto Preminger's navy epic

Otto Preminger's World War II epic about navy life was dismissed by most critics when it was released but it's a good film that deserved better.   John Wayne is front and center in one of those all star casts.  Patricia Neal is his love interest and is a strong enough actor to stand up to the Duke.  Kirk Douglas plays an antihero character who is Admiral Wayne's second in command.  

Preminger rounded up a decent supporting cast and the wide screen black and white photography at times looks pretty spectacular.  The final sea battle was criticized for looking a little too much like models in a studio swimming pool.  The battle is certainly a noisy confusing mess but real war is a noisy confusing mess.

Everyone expected fireworks from the liberal director and the very right wing star but apparently they were very respectful of each other.  

A good war drama that the public stayed away from unfortunately.

165 minutes, written by Wendell Mayes.

1958 - BONJOUR TRISTESSE, those wicked rich French people are kind of tiresome.

A young girl living in a mildly incestuous relationship with her father on the French Riviera, plots to get rid of her father's fiancee who she feels will come between them.

Otto Preminger and the writer Arthur Laurents are responsible for this very turgid drama.  But the chief bad guy is Preminger a director not known for his light touch. Today, Preminger has a fairly serious following as an auteur among certain film intellectuals.  Preminger was one of the early adapters of widescreen and on location photography.  Preminger preferred to have his actors perform in actual locales which he felt added to the authenticity of the film.  Bonjour Tristesse features lots of  photography in France using that old Wizard of Oz trick of switching between black and white and color. 

Preminger was also a noted stage director and much of the acting in his films always seems very stagy and forced at times.  The rare exceptions were people like James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder and in Bonjour Tristesse Deborah Kerr, who probably gives the best performance in the film. Overall though, the level of acting is really awful.  It was almost as if the actors couldn't perform naturally in actual natural locations.

The chief acting offender in Bonjour Tristesse is Jean Seberg, a Preminger discovery with an extremely limited if almost nonexistent range.  She has to carry the entire film since she is in about every scene.  As the old joke goes, she runs the range of emotions from A to B.  Seberg was never much of an actor and never really had much of a career, including Breathless which was really a Godard film not a Belmondo/Seberg film.

Alfred Hitchcock had a saying that he never made films about really rich people because he couldn't figure out when or where they went to the bathroom.  It is nearly impossible for an audience to relate to the superficial problems of the very rich in this film.  In the case of Bonjour Tristesse, Hitchcock probably nailed it on the head.

94 minutes.