Disraeli
                           
Director: Alfred E. Green
Year: 1929
Rating: 5.0
I am not really sure what made me click on this film to watch. It is as dry as a Sahara sandstorm and having been shot in 1929 as static as a man in an electric chair - but when I was in high school, I became very interested in British history and read up on the decades long rivalry between Gladstone of the Liberal Party and Disraeli of the Tory or Conservative Party. Disraeli is a fascinating historical figure - born Jewish but baptized into the Anglican Church as a teenager - but he was considered a Jew always by his political enemies. At the time when he entered politics, people of the Jewish faith were not allowed to be in Parliament.

 

As Prime Minister Disraeli passed great reform legislation protecting workers, expanding their rights, increasing the electorate, passing a bill to allow Jews to be in Parliament and buying the Suez Canal for England. This latter mention is what this film focuses on. Disraeli believed in the British Empire and Imperialism and saw India as the Crown Jewel. Once the Suez Canal was built dramatically cutting down the time it took to reach India, he thought it imperative for England to buy it.  As did the Russians who were hoping that the slow collapse of the Ottoman Empire would allow them to have a passageway to the Mediterranean.

 

Back in 1929, British actor George Arliss was Disraeli in the public's mind having toured as him in a play for five years and played him in the silent version of this film in 1921 (lost). Of course, Arliss was also Alexander Hamilton, Voltaire, Rothschild, The Duke of Wellington and Cardinal Richelieu in his film career. He won the Academy Award for this film and he is very good in it. It intrigues me that an American audience and American studio, Warner Brothers, were interested in a film about a Prime Minister from fifty years previously - adding to my theory that Americans were much more history literate at that time than today where there seems to be pride for many in their ignorance of history. And pretty much everything else.

 

Disraeli is the Prime Minister (1874 - 1880) and it has come to his attention that the Suez Canal is up for sale. Parliament is not in session, so he decides to act on his own by sending an emissary to Egypt to negotiate. The Bank of England has refused to finance this and so he has gone to another source - in real life the Rothschilds - to put up the money. Two English spies working for Russia in the meantime are doing everything they can to sabotage the deal. None of it is particularly exciting and to a large degree it feels like his stage play has simply been transferred to the screen. The actress who plays Disraeli's wife is in fact Arliss's wife and Florence played the same role in the 1921 version. In a very early role, Joan Bennett plays a young friend of the family. The video I saw this on is quite murky and I don't believe there is a better version.  Directed by Alfred E. Green.