A Political Film Worth Watching

In my opinion, there may have been no greater actor than Henry Fonda.

There are many actors I admire. I’m an admirer of the work of Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Tom Hanks, Peter Sellers, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Jack Nicholson, Gregory Peck and so many others.

But I guess Fonda tops my list because he had such a magnificent range as an actor. His performances alone made many films memorable.

People remember his westerns (like ”The Ox-Bow Incident,” ”The Tin Star” and ”My Darling Clementine”) and his comedies (like ”The Lady Eve,” ”Mister Roberts” and ”Yours, Mine and Ours”).

They remember his performances in courtroom dramas, like ”12 Angry Men,” and classic stories about important periods in American history, like ”The Grapes of Wrath,” ”Young Mr. Lincoln” and ”The Story of Alexander Graham Bell.”

But I’ve always felt Fonda was especially effective in political stories — whether his character was the president or not.

He gave a thoroughly plausible portrayal of a president in a crisis situation in ”Fail-Safe,” and he was excellent in an Adlai Stevenson-like role as a candidate at a deadlocked convention in ”The Best Man,” which was televised in the first installment of Turner Classic Movies' "American Politics in the Movies" series last Wednesday.

But I want to urge all my readers to tune in to Turner Classic Movies this Wednesday night.

One of Fonda’s most powerful performances, in ”Advise and Consent,” will be televised at 7 p.m. Central time. And, as a bonus, Jimmy Stewart in ”Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” will be televised next, at 9:30 p.m.

Although Stewart’s performance has been deservedly praised, it seems to me that many political films, not just Stewart’s, are structured in a certain way — characters who deserve our respect because they inevitably do the right thing are the heroes of the stories.

Stewart certainly cuts an heroic figure — a starry-eyed dreamer and leader of a Boy Rangers group who tries to take on a corrupt political machine and insists that ”the only causes worth fighting for [are] the lost causes.”

And, in the end, Stewart’s corrupt colleague in the Senate, played by Claude Rains, gives his mea culpa on the floor of the Senate and urges the other senators to ”[e]xpel me! Not him. Every word that boy said is the truth. … I’m not fit for office!”

It’s entertaining, but it's predictable. What did you expect? It's a Frank Capra film!

I think ”Advise and Consent” may be my favorite political movie of all time. The story was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Allen Drury in 1959. My mother often told me that she read that novel when I was an infant and could hardly put it down, even when she had to feed me!

I read it myself while I was in college, and I found out what she had been talking about. I, too, could hardly put it down, and I got so hooked by the story that I read the ensuing novels Drury wrote in what became a six-novel series.

Drury’s story practically crackles on the screen with moments like the one early in the film, when Fonda (who plays a nominee for secretary of state) says, ”[T]his is a Washington, D.C. kind of lie. It's when the other person knows you're lying and also knows you know he knows.”

It’s kind of a condescending story at times, but it’s a nice change from the typical political movie fare. There’s a very human quality to the characters in ”Advise and Consent,” a gritty realism, whether you’re reading the book or watching the movie (and I recommend both).

The good guys aren’t always good, and the bad guys aren’t always bad.

Kind of like real life, huh?