The Prime Minister

This film was produced in 1941, and the feeling one gets when watching it that you are being educated in how to be loyal to England. A loose portrayal of the life and career of Benjamin Disraeli, culminating in him making military moves, with the consent of queen Victoria behind the cabinets back.

Very ham-fisted in its message, you almost want to start arguing with the screen, not because its particularly inaccurate in its portrayal of Disraeli, just that its essentially a war-time propaganda film, and nothing can be that cut and dried.

Gielgud is fascinating to watch as always, but even he seems to begin to grate towards the end.

*1/2 out of ****

A stodgy love story, loosely tied in to the life of Disraeli. One of those films where it starts out with the main stars as young lovers, and then you get a few paragraphs of text that fill in 30 years or so, and then they are old and dying. Perhaps there is a good film to be made from the political battles of the Victorian 'giants', Disraeli and Gladstone, but this is not it.

Obviously, this film was designed to bolster the morale of the Brits at the time of the Blitz, but couldn't Warner Brothers have been more careful with the flow of the picture? It begins, as many biopics do, by reducing a great person's life to a flimsy love story. Only later, when his wife leaves the picture, does this truly become a political film. John Gielgud, looking wispy and vaguely Disraelite, turns in one of his least believable performances, especially in the scenes where he plays the elderly Disraeli. The poor make-up job, and his ridiculously stereotyped "old man" facial features make some of those scenes almost unwatchable.

This is the second film from this era that I have recently seen (the other being "The Life of Emile Zola") where a studio can make a picture about a Jewish person without ever mentioning the "J" word. When a person's Jewishness is so central to the plot, pussyfooting around it is unforgivable.

From a historical perspective, my favorite parts of this film were the Disraeli harangues in which he is obviously rubbing salt in Chamberlain-the-appeaser's wounds. I'm sure Churchill would have loved watching those scenes.

"The Prime Minister" is a film of its times. As Britain had its back up against the wall against the German war machine, most of the films made in the UK were intended to bolster the war effort...either directly or indirectly. So, while the film is set in the 19th century, its aim clearly is to harken back to a bygone era...when Britain was the strongest colonial power on the planet. It also has the theme of unity and draws obvious parallels to Churchill and his seemingly lone campaign against the Axis. The film also was designed to turn American sentiment towards the cause of this underdog. As a result, the film seems a bit overly schmaltzy and overly dramatic at times. Realism was being sacrificed for propaganda reasons.

Unlike the earlier Warner Brothers film, "Disraeli" (1929), this film from the same studio tries to do an overview of Benjamin Disraeli's entire career. It follows him as a rich dandy to joining Parliament to becoming Prime Minister (several times...off and on). All the while, his wife is by his side...encouraging and pushing him toward greatness.

So is it any good? Yes, but I was surprised that occasionally John Gielgud (Disraeli) overacted a bit. He also struggled with showing emotion...any emotion. He was a great actor, but you can't see a lot of this greatness here. But as I said above, realism was sacrificed a bit in order to make the film rousing and a propaganda piece...and that had to effect his acting. The film also, at least in 2022, a bit stodgy and slow. Not a bad film...but you might learn a better lesson about the man by reading the Wikipedia article on him. Also, I agree with the reviewer, as it seems odd that the movie never once mentions that Disraeli was Jewish (though he later converted to the Church of England)...odd considering the state of Jewry in 1941.

This film had one serious flaw. It did not mention even once that Disraeli was Jewish. Almost the whole history of Disraeli's personal and political life was a history of struggling to overcome Anti-Semitism and struggling to be accepted into mainstream British society.Just describing the history of a dandy young man and novelist who becomes one of the rising stars of a young group of politicians during the earlyVictorian period doesn't give us the complete story of the real Disraeli