Review of Advise & Consent (1962) by Jerry W — 07 Apr 2006

[b]Advise & Consent[/b], Preminger.

[indent]Bah. This story about a presidential nomination gone awry in the US Senate is long enough, is slow enough to have actually provided some insight into the world of politics. But instead, Preminger uses his slow boiling plot (complete with the bluntly foreshadowed twists) to tell the same old story about the moral deficit in American Politics. While [b]Advise & Consent[/b] is better than Capra's sappy [b]Mr. Smith Goes To Washington[/b] (Henry Fonda > Jimmy Stewart), it succeeds mostly in moving trite archetypes around the superficial Washington setting it creates.

Oh and I hate the editing style used throughout which transitions between scenes by placing one shot on top of another. The current scene becomes transparent and as it vanishes the new scene comes to the fore. Preminger is surely trying to add layers to his flimsy movie, but it does not work.

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