The Best Man

Taut drama sets intellectual ditherer (Henry Fonda) against win-at-all-costs demagogue (Cliff Robertson). Close to current US experience. Lee Tracy is fabulous as former President. Surprise ending that should be seen by every voter.

Superb on all levels. Great cast. Hit Broadway play. Fine performances. A totally absorbing story and theme. Two candidates are running for the Presidency of the United States. One is honorable. The other is not . Anything to grab the solid-gold ring! A behind-the-scenes look at political national politics and the people who will say and do anything to bring the grand prize home to their nest. Henry Fonda is the good guy. Cliff Robertson is the man in black. Fine performances by Lee Tracy as the sitting president of The United States. Margaret Leighton as Fonda's estranged wife and Ann Sothern as an influential women's activist are near-perfect and excel throughout. Good supporting cast which includes Kevin McCarthy, Gene Raymond and Shelley Berman. Watch this one. It's a winner! Who wins the election? Watch it and find out. Hint. It's an unexpected surprise but most fitting. Incidently, Lee Tracy was oscar nominated for his portrayal of the president.

The cast were wonderful. The movie was set in the mid 60's but it still resonated today. Politics are Politics. Henry Fonda is always Great.

This is a fine, suspenseful, well-acted film about the long-lost time when political conventions had stances to decide and candidates to choose. I don't do reviews, but this is necessary information. I bought this film in the spring of 2010. It stalled half-way through, and nothing could make it play beyond that point. I complained, and Amazon sent me another. They never checked it out. Same problem exactly. Having seen recent reviews indicating that the problem had been corrected, I ordered a third copy in January 2011 (I really like this movie). I just watched it. All the way through. Pristine print. It was worth all the trouble. I have no way of knowing whether all copies are now playable, but there's a good chance they are.

I remember seeing this movie as a kid, and really enjoying it. (I'm Irish, so of course I love movies about politics.) I wanted to add it to my permanent collection. But the first DVD was defective; it stalled about an hour into the movie, and nothing I could do could get it to continue playing. I tried it in two players, and on my computer. I contacted amazon.com and they sent me a replacement. The replacement was even worse! It started stalling in the opening credits. I notified amazon.com again, and they surmised that it would be pointless to send me a third disc, because it would probably be defective too. Both discs have been returned to amazon.com. So, in short, I'm sure that the movie itself is just as great as I dimly remember it, but amazon.com's vendor has apparently supplied a defective batch of discs. Once this problem is worked out, I will gladly try to order again.

Extraordinarily well-put-together movie, with writing by Gore Vidal. Every performance is great. Henry Fonda is terrific as the man who may have too much conscience to be an able politician, and Cliff Robertson as the consummate politician. Lee Tracy as the old war-horse former U.S. President, Edie Adams as Robertson's rattle-brained but loyal wife, and Margaret Leighton as the elegant and intelligent estranged wife of Henry Fonda -- aw, heck, they're all great. It's close to being a perfect movie, with a meaty philosophical issue. See it!

This is simply BRILLAINTLY Done!!! Fabulous Cast leads the way to where U just don't move!!! Its a Great politcal piece done in 1964 when LBJ was President!!! If U love political films!! U WILL LOVE THIS ONE!!! In B/W and Mono ..but doesn't matter!!! Plays best this way!!

Cliff Robertson is perfect for his role.Good ending.

love the old films and this has a great twist at the end.

good movie

very good movie showing what a man can do ,wright or wrong,to gain power

Until I read about The Best Man in a positive review from a friend, this political thriller has completely passed me by, yet it is one of the best of the genre I have seen. Written by Gore Vidal it unsurprisingly takes a caustic view of politics, but also takes a realistic one. Unlike the cartoon character villans or heroes usually used to depict politicians in fiction, the characters in this film are rounded, subtle, believable and behave like real politicians. The story is of a National Presidential Convention in 1964 for an unnamed party which has yet to choose between an Adlai Stevenson / John F Kennedy type candidate (William Russell, played by Henry Fonda) and a Richard Nixon type candidate (Joe Cantwell, played by Cliff Robertson). It is good dramatic stuff, with Russell sufficiently flawed that there is no simple good guy to cheer to victory and genuine tension until the very end as to who is going to win. As you might expect from a Gore Vidal film, it treats themes such as segregation, the role of women in politics and homosexuality in a more modern and liberal way than many of the time. Even so, the portrayal of a key gay character is at times uncomfortably caricatured to contemporary eyes. Yet much of the dialogue is waspish and benefits from close listening, having the sort of pacy intelligence which the West Wing had at its best. Two comments in particular, from the ex-President being courted by Russell and Cantwell, stuck in my mind. Both were directed at Russell: "The people like your sort. They figure since you've got so much money of your own, you won't go stealing theirs." "You've got such a good mind that sometimes you get so busy thinking how complex everything is, that important problems don't get solved." Great fun to watch.

The Best Man could be said to form the centrepiece of a fine trio of films that examine the conflicting claims of idealism and cynical opportunism in the jungle of Washington politics. Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) has an idealistic young senator discovering the realities of career advancement, and nearly 40 years later All The President's Men (1976) chronicles in absorbing detail the chilling extent to which criminal corruption has taken hold under Nixon. The Best Man (1964) is set just as an unnamed political party is holding its convention to choose its presidential election candidate from 5 hopefuls (ie not quite as per the present Democrat/Republican procedure). The two front runners, Henry Fonda (liberal, principled) and Cliff Robertson (right-wing populist, ready to get as down and dirty as it takes) are slugging it out while Lee Tracy's ex-President (mysteriously already having stepped down in a departure from present practice) debates whom to endorse. The movie follows the see-sawing of advantage as both battle to grab Tracy's favour while having to make decisions about how far to jettison morality in pursuit of the Big Plum. This is a classy production in every sense, both gripping and thoughtful, and never too talky which is an easy pitfall for this type of film to take. The stand-out feature is Gore Vidal's script, taken by him from his Broadway play, which is urgent, literate and economical in display of the characters' personalities and viewpoints. It never trivialises the competing pull of ambition and jettisoning of belief. The direction by Franklin Schaffner (Patton, Planet of the Apes, Papillon) is brisk in its movement from the domestic to the public, and though the whole thing is studio-set it never feels cramped or limited in scope. There's clever integration of library pictures of political conventions into the action. Henry Fonda once again plays the liberal at war with his conscience; despite his screen presence, I thought he's here less interesting than Cliff Robertson who gets a long way down into the character of the self-made, driven, unscrupulous yet strangely sympathetic contender. The support acting is lively - Lee Tracy (of whom we learn that "he had a voracious appetite for high living") as the ex-President makes an Oscar-winning turn as a self-proclaimed folksy, simple man of politics, and Ann Sothern (excellent in Letter to Three Wives from 1949) is a fast-talking, demanding party mover-and-shaker. Top-notch political satire, cynical but with a heart.