The Best Man
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Year Released: 1964
Rating: 2.0
Two candidates run against each other for the Presidential Nomination in this film of the Gore Vidal play - trouble is, one's a promiscuous manic-depressive (who 'proves' he's an 'intellectual' by freely quoting Bertrand Russell and Martin Luther; intellectuals, too, tend to be prone to eccentricity, or so this picture says) and the other's an aggressive homosexual. They each threaten to reveal the truth about each other during the campaign to get an edge, though the way Vidal works it out (in the cheapest possible way), the one knocks out the other (their dark secrets cancel each other out), thereby passing the mantle onto an unheard of third candidate, claiming that it's better to be obscure and unrecognized than popular and dynamic (the people, conveniently enough, are quick to agree). There is some of Vidal's wit in the dialogue - his take on the Communist hysteria is dead-on - though the story itself could have been better thought out.
