1962! - is it really 50 years ago? I was 16 and mad about movies, books and magazines and music; I see my 16 year old nephew now just as mad about his computer games and all his gadgets - he had his own laptop and internet since he was 15, I just had the radio and the two local cinemas and bookshops and library ... see 1962 label for other posts on that fascinating year - of course there is Marilyn's 50th anniversary too...
One of 1962's big hitters, Otto Preminger's ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating re-watch now. Its from one of those important novels of the time by Allen Drury, purporting to take the lid off American politics and the inner workings of the Senate. It was the ideal subject for Preminger after the success of ANATOMY OF A MURDER in 1959 (somehow his EXODUS in 1960 just does not do it for me), and is another great black and white film with good scope compositions and that fascinating cast: Henry Fonda as the proposed Secretary of State who may have communist leanings, Charles Laughton (his last role) as the wily Southern senator Seb Cooley trying to smear him, Walter Pidgeon has a good roles as the Senate Majority Leader, along with Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney (Otto's LAURA) as an elegant Washington hostess, Franchot Tone as the ailing President and Lew Ayres as the Vice President, Burgess Meredith and Don Murray as the blackmailed senator Brig Anderson with Inga Swenson as his uncomprehending wife.
What is fascinating now is that Anderson, as President of the Senatorial sub-committee considering the nomination of Leffingwell (Fonda), is being blackmailed [by Cooley's minions] over a gay relationship during his youth in wartime Hawaii - will the ambitious young senator crack under the pressure? Instead he goes to New York and tries to reason with his old army buddy, so we get that gay bar - maybe the first in a mainstream American film? - with those shadowy denizens of this strange underword; we see the senator recoil in horror and flee in a taxi, leaving his ex-pal lying in the gutter ... we soon realise due to the music and shadowy camerawork that the senator has only one solution open to him, and that involves an open razor ...
Cooley and the others are left to sort out the mess as the film shows the workings of U.S. politics and seems to be shot in the real locations. It is a very ambitious and entertaining work with a large cast, and certainly one of the best of that great year 1962. (see label).
The advertising tried to make it more sensational ... |
ADVISE & CONSENT |
Frank Sinatra too as THE DETECTIVE in 1967 goes after that murderer of a swishy guy picked up in a luridly depicted (no black and white shadows here, but Fox scope and colour) bar - the malicious gay guy of course taunts the repressed married man who goes berserk and bashes him with an ashtray; the other gays are all lonely oddballs whom the cops despise and treat like dirt. By 1968 though Steiger had loosened up enough to have fun with his gay hairdresser in NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - one of the many disguises he used to murder lonely widows (Rod Steiger label). Its a hilarious treat and George Segal and Lee Remick are a perfect late '60s couple, as were Steve and Faye in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Then '69 gave us the dreadful STAIRCASE where Donen, Burton and Harrison were way off key - it was quite a good play on stage actually.
[Law too, who died aged 70 in 2008, had his 10 good years from the mid 60s - with Faye in Otto's HURRY SUNDOWN and Euro-fare like DANGER: DIABOLIK and of course Pygar the blind angel in BARBARELLA ... and trash classic THE LOVE MACHINE in 1970 (Trash label)].
The gals didn't fare so well either: Shirley McLaine as Martha Dobie in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (or THE LOUDEST WHISPER), Wyler's second film of Hellman's THESE THREE, has to hang herself when she realises she really does love Audrey Hepburn - while in '67's THE FOX Keir Dullea's woodman comes between Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis, also with fatal results ... but the '70s and liberation were just around the corner. Vito Russo's book and the film of THE CELLULOID CLOSET has all the details and lots more ....
ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating movie - THE SERGEANT played on TCM here a while back but I couldn't bring myself to look at it again, and Preminger's next one, tackling religion, THE CARDINAL from 1963 gets a re-run this Saturday - it could be another rainy afternoon movie here, not least of its attractions being Romy Schneider in one of her early American films as The Cardinal's love interest ...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete