65th Street Construction On Sale Now Infernal Machines Met: Peter Grimes Thorold Dickinson Program Overview Arsenal Stadium Mystery Gaslight The High Command Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer Men of Two Worlds Next of Kin The Prime Minister The Queen of Spades Secret People Thorold Dickinson Shorts Met: Tristan und Isolde Gr. Scr.: Garbage... ND/NF Classics 2008 Met: La Bohème SE: On the Street SE: Dreams... NYAFF 2008 IN: Phyllis and Harold Romanian Cinema Gr. Scr.: Mountaintop... YFF: Le Boucher GS: The Kid Brother SE: Ned Rorem Met: La Fille du Régiment Ongoing Programs Film Comment Selects Young Friends of Film Green Screens Browse Calendar Past Programs Furman Gallery Theater Rental Theater Information Press Office Sign up for FSLC ReelNews

The Prime Minister Series: Thorold Dickinson’s World of Cinema Director: Thorold Dickinson, Country: United Kingdom, Release: 1941, Runtime: 94 Dickinson was not happy with this film, a “biography” of Benjamin Disraeli with a special emphasis on his confrontation with Bismarck’s Germany, and a less successful piece of propaganda than Next of Kin. The film came to him as a package, and he accepted it in the spirit of a contract director taking on a new assignment. Nonetheless, The Prime Minister is a vigorous and engaging film, and it contains greatness: John Gielgud’s performance in the title role is a thing of beauty. It was one of Gielgud’s rare screen performances during this period (his appearances in film were spotty until the late ‘60s), and his Disraeli is funny, touchingly awkward, and, of course, movingly eloquent: that magical voice, likened by Molly Haskell to “a trumpet muffled in silk” is in its full glory. It should be said that Diana Wynyard is wonderful as the great PM’s wife, and the scenes between the two of them are the high point of this lively period piece.

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