ada the leading man is my tpye

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

MartinHafer "Disraeli" is an odd sort of film that was quite popular during the 1920s-1940s. Hollywood had an inexplicable love affair with British Colonialism and film after film portray the British as the true masters of the world! Nowadays, folks are much more likely to look at the films and wonder why the heroes are the folks enslaving much of the globe...all cloaked in the guise of benevolence. One of the earliest of these films is "Disraeli" (1921 and 1929) but there also are many other examples, such as "Gunga Din", "Wee Willie Winkle" and "Lives of a Bengal Lancer"...all very popular films promoting the notion of British uniqueness and supremacy.This story is about a portion of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's career--around the time that the British essentially bought the Suez Canal out from under the French. In his career, Disraeli was the epitome of the British White Supremacist--always advancing the notion that Britain had a destiny to rule much of the world. In sharp contrast, William Gladstone also served as Prime Minister (both alternating in this role many times) and Gladstone thought the colonial policy was a most unbecoming and unchristian notion...yet, sadly, this great politician did NOT get an expensive biopic! Niceness isn't all that interesting, apparently!This 1929 version is the second starring George Arliss. He made a silent version earlier in the decade and because this film is an early sound picture it has many of the usual features--it's much more set bound and actors tend to stand close together at times because microphones were not especially good. So, while Warner Brothers was the best company in the world in 1929 when it came to sound pictures, it still had a few shortcomings which a viewer might notice in this film.So is it any good? By 1929 standards, it's exceptional and you can see why Arliss took the Best Actor award. However, just a few years later, Arliss' acting became even more natural (with less speechifying) in front of the camera and he was glorious in films like "The Working Man", "The King's Vacation" and "Mister Hobo". And, compared to most 1929 films, it holds up reasonably well today...though it clearly is a bit stagy. My biggest complaints are not about the acting or sound but simply the notion of making a film to celebrate British global rule...something which seemed so natural and acceptable back in the day but which seems very anachronistic given today's sensibilities.

Michael_Elliott Disraeli (1929) ** (out of 4) Creaky, early talkie won George Arliss the Best Actor Oscar but outside of his performance there's very little to recommend here. In the film he plays British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli who not only tries playing match maker (to Anthony Bushell and Joan Bennett) but also trying to cool the political climate in the country. Disraeli's main challenge comes when he tries to buy the Suez Canal as he's not prepared for the battle that will come. This film comes as a major disappointment to me especially after reading so many positive reviews. It seems the majority of people who viewed this film did enjoy it but I'm certainly not one of them. I did love the performance of Arliss who is the main reason to watch this. Apparently Arliss played this role several times on stage and even did a 1921 movie version, which is sadly now lost except for one reel. He certainly knows this role and feels very comfortable playing it and this comes across on the screen as he appears to just float from one scene to the next. Arliss is clearly very comfortable here and that easy-going nature really comes across well and he manages to make the character very well-rounded. Both Bushell and Bennett are charming in their roles and they look great together but I must it that I found their relationship to be rather lacking and not at all interesting. Even worse, for me, was all the political stuff because of all talky everything was. I was growing real tired of the constant dialogue as it wasn't written very well and the only all blandness of the non-stop words. Even worse is that the film has a very stagy look that just brings the film to a complete stop.

calvinnme This is one of the few very early talkies that is neither a musical nor an overly dull stage production. It is a fascinating look into a very brief episode in the professional life of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli - specifically his effort in obtaining the Suez Canal for Great Britain. Arliss gives a well-deserved Academy Award winning performance as the prime minister, and he is so adept at dialogue and with conveying his mood with glances and small gestures and the pace of the film is so brisk that you hardly notice the 1929 movie camera that cannot budge an inch. In this short 90 minute film Disraeli plays matchmaker, mentor, breaker of a spy ring, and master dealmaker with a sophistication of dialogue and acting that is rarely seen in films for another ten years. Particularly moving is the portrayal of Disraeli's relationship with his wife, played by Arliss' actual wife to whom he was wed in 1899 until his death. The mutual respect and tenderness the couple show for one another is quite touching.The audio and video of the VHS version of this film is really in bad shape. There is very bad background hissing in the audio which can make the dialogue - so important to the development of the plot - sometimes difficult to understand. The video doesn't have much scratchiness to it, but there are periods of time when blurry areas will appear on the screen that can be quite distracting, and the contrast is quite poor. However, this film is quite enjoyable 80 years after it was made. Seeing that it is much more than a rickety curio, it would be nice to see Warner Home Video clean up the film technically as much as is possible and put it on DVD.

jacksflicks I must second the comments about Mr. Arliss. He is magnificent. I eat up everything of his I can find. I highly recommend The Iron Duke, about the Duke of Wellington. It's really fun to compare it with Disraeli. Actually, George Arliss plays George Arliss in both, but then Barrymore and Bette Davis (whom, by the way, Arliss discovered) were always playing themselves, too. The point is, that we love watching them play themselves. Arliss shops for roles that fit him. He doesn't try to shoehorn himself into a role. I think I get as much of a kick out of Arliss's banter, his small talk, as his great declamations. He really is great with one-liners, which come off in a completely natural way, creating the illusion that we really are a fly on the wall, witnessing great historical figures on an intimate level. For example, the way he formally introduces to others his office assistant, whom he knows to be a spy: "This is Mr. Foljambe — such a hard worker." Another wonderful thing about Disraeli is something others have also touched on here. This was one of the first talkies, and acting was still informed by the flamboyant physical gestures that were the language of silent cinema and necessities of the stage, where actors had to project themselves without benefit of a big screen's projecting them with closeups. We can see this especially in the male ingénue part played by Anthony Bushell, whose arm across the chest was meant to convey ardor but which now comes across as corny. But I enjoy seeing this as an artifact, like listening to music of the period. In the case of Mr. Arliss, the staginess is indeed transcended. In Mr. Arliss we are lucky in having preserved one of the great stage actors of the era, a window into the a world when the theatre was THE great medium and when stage actors were THE great actors. So Disraeli is not only a great entertainment but a great document, of both its subject and of its own era.