Advise & Consent

Lifting the lid on the corruption of US politics, Preminger’s influential thriller reveals the snake-pit reality of life in Washington, D.C.

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  • Director

    Otto Preminger

  • With

    Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton

  • USA 1962. 139min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    PG

The corridors of power lead to the backrooms where deals are made and careers are sabotaged in Preminger’s labyrinthine adaptation of Allen Drury’s Pulitzer-winning novel. Setting the template for future political thrillers, from All the President’s Men to House of Cards, Advise & Consent offers an insider’s view on the Machiavellian machinations involved in confirming, or undermining, Fonda’s Senator Leffingwell as Secretary of State. Audacious in its day for challenging the Hays Code with a depiction of a gay nightclub, the film’s cast of august Hollywood veterans are all outstanding, but the greatest star is Sam Leavitt’s sinuous black and white Scope photography, which isolates the characters against the monumental Washington, D.C. backdrop, pinning them as pawns in the bigger political system. It screens from an original 1962 release print.

James Bell