John Stump This early 60's movie introduced me to the harmful consequences of the closet. It portrayed a civil rights fight that still awaits final resolution.I consider Advice and Consent one of those essential political movies high on the list with The Last Hurrah; The Lion in Winter; Lawrence of Arabia; Seven Days in May; China Town; and Devil in a Blue Dress. When watching this B&W mono sound movie enjoy the details of a simpler time of dial phones, propeller airliners with uniformed stewardesses, and a casual human scale low security world. I thought that the scale of the homes and hotel rooms interesting and reflective of this pre-central air conditioning world. Wealthy homes have window air conditioners, screen doors and hotel room doors with ventilator panels.

lasttimeisaw I will not refute that my radical response towards Preminger's ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959, 5/10) vaguely seven years ago, is due to a commonplace disparity of personal taste, which may explain my procrastinated second foray into Preminger's cannon, the less prominent and awards-snubbed ADVISE & CONSENT. Personally speaking, political drama is not my genre of passion especially I have grown up from a country where no such type of cinema conspicuously exists, plus basically I have few clues of the structure and framework as regards the complex USA political hierarchy (although thanks to HOUSE OF CARDS, I have assimilated some elementary guidances now), thereby, my ingrained insouciance is the chief impediment. Efficiently introduced in the very first scene, the central issue is zooming in on the designation of the newly-nominated Secretary of State Robert Leffingwell (Fonda) by the ailing President (Tone), who resorts to Senate Majority Leader (Pidgeon) to facilitate the procedure in the Congress while the main drag force is a senior Senator Cooley (Laughton) who holds a personal ill will against Robert. Then roughly the film can be split into halves, the first one principally concerns a cross- examination of Robert's communist background in a subcommittee presided by the budding Senator Anderson (Murray), it's a conflict blurs the lines between truth and lie, which can be implied tacitly as an imperative criterion in politicking and also segues into the second half pertains to Anderson being extorted into an earlier jurisdiction by an envious Senator Van Ackerman (Grizzard), with an extra push from Cooley. Anderson is plagued by the deepest secret about his sexual orientation, as a result, a certain tragic follows. The two glaring talking points (communism and closeted homosexual) come as convenient and topical at the Cold War years, half a century later, propitiously we are lumbering on. At the final act, the Vice President (Ayres) steals the show as a fluke of an arbitrary fabrication on the votes. For audiences, the most palatable merit is a stellar ensemble body of work, first-billed though, Fonda vanishes completely after two thirds of the story, he is as righteous as in 12 ANGRY MEN (1957, 9/10); seeing as his swan song, Laughton withstands his splendor wonderfully and his eloquence in oratory is second to none. Two surprisingly enacted performances are from a suave Pidgeon, whose disparaging tongue-lashing to Van Acherman is perfectly on the nose, and a square-shouldered Murray carries a more tortuous story development and emanates an absorbing shock wave. I put all four in leading category, since in supporting circle, Tone, Ayres, Meredith (riveting as a key witness mouthing slanders) and even Tucker (the paunchy pimp totally incongruous with the bureaucratic atmosphere) are equally contending along with a sophisticated Tierney past her prime but her finesse never recedes. In a nutshell, ADVISE & CONSENT is an exemplar of political drama, and more unexpectedly it beckons a revisit and revaluation of ANATOMY OF A MURDER for me, where I may not give enough credit for Preminger's calculated camera scheduling and detached phlegm out of his source material.

samtrak1204 I was only 11 years old when I fell in love with Don Murrary during his naked bathtub scene in Bus Stop in 1956. He was the most beautiful perfect male I had ever seen on screen. I will always remember Don doing sexy sit-ups in clingy long johns so it is indeed ironic and delightful seeing Don in Advise & Consent playing the closeted homosexual husband - a painful role I would later assume as an adult in real life. Don is boyishly cute as ever and is the only reason I revisit this fine film again and again. I also love the shots of vintage Washington...especially the classic cars, wireless streetcars and buffalo statues on the Q Street bridge where I jog.I dislike Charles Laughton as the senator from South Carolina as much as I dislike Strom Thurmond, the real racist and persecutor of African-Americans.

richard-1787 This movie is too long, but once it finally gets going - once we find out what Brig Anderson is being blackmailed for, and then the political maneuvering that goes on in the Senate - it moves to a conclusion with real dramatic power, in part because of good direction, in part because of fine acting all the way around.Others have weighed in on the various virtues - and defects - of the movie. I thought I'd address a point that doesn't seem to have been discussed: the portrayal of Brig Anderson as a man who had a homosexual relationship.Late in the movie we learn that the handsome young senator Brigham Anderson had a homosexual relationship during WW II while stationed in Hawaii. This is not presented as an anonymous encounter in an airport men's room or something like that, but rather as an emotional, and therefore we must assume romantic, relationship between two men. We see Anderson's "Dean John" letter to his war-time companion, Ray, in which he declares the relationship a mistake and tells Ray he is now going to lead the life of a straight man. We also see a picture of the two of them as a lay-bedecked, smiling couple.Earlier in the movie, before we have reason to suspect why, Anderson's wife says something about their marriage not having been very "exciting," which suggests that there was something wrong with their sex life.If we put that together in retrospect, we conclude that Anderson did not "leave behind" his homosexuality when he returned to the mainland after the war, but rather "settled for" a heterosexual marriage that was not fulfilling for him sexually.Given that, the portrayal of Anderson, which is uniformly positive if, in the end, very sad, is interesting. He is a man of principle who fights for what he believes to be right. (Granted, that included a hatred of Communism, but the movie was made in 1962, the era of the Cuban missile crisis.) The only other glimpse we get of gay men in the movie is very short: a brief scene inside a gay bar. It really doesn't seem out of the ordinary.