THE BEST MAN

This 1964 film is about one of my favourite subjects, US politics.  It is an adaptation by Gore Vidal of his own play, set in a party convention which has to choose the man who will contest the Presidential election.  It seems to be everyone's assumption that whoever is the successful nominee will win that election, so there's a lot at stake.

The two front-runners represent two strands of US politics, elitism and populism.

In the elitist corner is William Russell, played by Henry Fonda in his most principled mode.  He's rich, clever, never short of a literary quote, but has a fragile marriage possibly due to some past affairs of his.  His mental health might also be fragile given that we learn during the film that he once had a nervous breakdown so bad that it hospitalised him for a while. Vidal based him on the Democrat politician Adlai Stevenson, who lost two Presidential elections.

In the populist corner is Joe Cantwell, played by Cliff Robertson. Cantwell is based on the notorious Republican politician Joe McCarthy - he is a self-styled no-nonsense 'man of the people' who is ruthless in the pursuit of power.

The standout performance for me was by an actor I was unfamiliar with, Lee Tracy, who plays ex-President Art Hockstader, based on Harry Truman.  His early scenes with first Russell and then Cantwell are highlights of a film that never quite delivered what I was hoping for - an acerbic depiction of political chicanery.  

In the early stages the key question is who will Hockstader endorse? The answer is neither, which didn't make a lot of sense to me since he is determined to stop Cantwell, and subsequent to his non-endorsement he does all he can to help Russell.

In the second half of the film, both candidates have material with which to smear the other, and the main question is whether the self-righteous Russell will descend to the gutter (as he sees it), or refrain.

The end result, that neither Russell or Cantwell wins the nomination, is not a great surprise, nor that the title of the film is intended to be ironic.  Appropriately the unimpressive winning candidate doesn't get to speak any lines, and this was the only film the actor playing him made.  

Both Russell and Cantwell are somewhat predictable one-dimensional characters, and none of the supporting characters, other than Hockstader, make much of an impact, although I quite liked the scenes between Russell and his English wife (played by Margaret Leighton). 

I guess for its time the film had some shock value by showing the kind of horse-trading that goes on but once you've seen Veep (one of my favourite comedy series) they inevitably seem tame.  

Hockstader in a short speech at a banquet predicts that one day there will be a black President, and a woman President.  Sadly, sixty years on only one of those has come to pass.

Equally sadly, US politics is in a far, far worse state that anyone sixty years ago could possibly have foreseen.  

Although overall the film was a bit of a disappointment it's still an intelligent well-made film, directed by the reliable Franklin J Schaffner.  

RATING: ✓ Cheers