Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent, 1962

Advise and Consent finally reveals Preminger as one of the cinema's great moralists.
--Robin Wood, Movie Magazine.

I read Allen Drury's novel when I was 13 and fascinated by politics, hoping to go into it some day.  I even tried to get a job as a Congressional page, but my Congressman was from the wrong party.  I saw Preminger's film when I was in prep school and found it fascinating, beautiful and depressing for what it "revealed" about politics.  Some movies exemplify their time, some transcend it, and some --including Advise and Consent -- do both.  The film is still considered by some homophobic for its depiction of an attempt to blackmail a Senator from Utah (presumed to be Mormon, though that it not explicitly stated) and the somewhat lurid depiction of a gay bar.  I think anyone watching the film would find it more complicated; as Robin Wood (who only later came out as gay) writes:  "Brig is hysterically rejecting an aspect of himself with which he has always refused to come to terms."  when he rejects his gay lover.

Advise and Consent is filmed in that unusual format: wide-screen black-and-white, as Preminger allows all the participants to react to each other within the frame, capturing effectively their dependence on one another.  Veteran actors Walter Pigeon, Lew Ayres, Franchot Tone and, especially, Charles Laughton (it was his last film) bring their years of experience to bear on the roles of politicians with years of experience.  Each lead role involves compromise, often against one's principles, as a means of survival, contradicting the asserted optimism of the Kennedy years.