Based on the 1987 book "Honeytrap" by Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril, this is quite a good film treatment of the Profumo affair which rocked the British establishment in 1963 and severely discredited the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan. It is reasonably historically accurate but neither the script by Michael Thomas nor the direction by Michael Caton-Jones, making his debut, are as strong as they could be. Given the subject matter, it could hardly leave out sex scenes but some of them were a little over the top.
The film's strength lies in the acting. John Hurt gives a brilliant performance as Stephen Ward, the social climbing osteopath and artist who uses girls such as Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies to increase his status by introducing them to prominent men. In Keeler's case, the fact that he introduced her to both the Minister of War John Profumo and the Russian naval attaché / spy Eugene Ivanov was the source of the trouble. In the film, Ward is not depicted as being a very good man. In fact, he is a rather unsavoury sort whom my mother would describe as "a dirty devil." He seems to care about no one but himself. Keeler is fond of him but I think that his affection for her is limited to what he thought that she could for him. However, he is never as interesting or compelling a character as he could be as the writing is somewhat lacking. That said, the film did a good job in eliciting sympathy towards the end when his "friends" abandon him and he is put on trial for living off immoral earnings or, to put it more simply, being a pimp. In the film's final scene, Ward's suicide is depicted when he takes a drug overdose, no longer able to cope with the pressure of the trial and the constant hounding of the press. He was found guilty in absentia shortly before his death but the result has been severely criticised due to the lack of evidence against him and it is currently under review. There was plenty of blame to go around but the bulk of it was shouldered by Ward, which was unfair. On the other hand, Profumo was able to rebuild his reputation to a certain extent due to his charity work. The cynical part of me tends to think that that was the main reason why he did it.
I had never seen Joanne Whalley in anything before but I was very impressed by her performance of Christine Keeler, the last surviving major participant in the scandal. The film depicts Keeler as a troubled young woman, barely more than a child when she meets Ward and moves in with him. Ward does not force her into having relationships with numerous men but he does subtly manipulate her into doing so. She was hardly a naive person in spite of her youth but she trusted him more than he deserved and he let her down. I can't blame her for going to the press in the circumstances. Ian McKellen is extremely good as Profumo, whom the film does not hesitate to portray in a very negative light, but he has surprisingly little screen time. Bridget Fonda has seldom been better than as Mandy Rice-Davies, who delivered the immortal line, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" during Ward's trial, even if her English accent does occasionally slip. It also features great performances from the perfectly cast Leslie Phillips as Lord Astor, Jereon Krabbé as Ivanov, Deborah Grant as Profumo's heartbroken, humiliated wife Valerie Hobson (the former film star best known for her roles in "Bride of Frankenstein" and "Great Expectations" (1946)), Daniel Massey as Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Iain Cuthbertson as Lord Hailsham, Jean Alexander as Mrs. Keeler, Alex Norton and Paul Brooke as the police officers and Trevor Eve as the American erstwhile matinée idol David Fairfax, Jr., who is no way, shape or form based on Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Showing that it really is a very small world, both Hobson and Fairbanks, Jr. appeared in the 1937 film "Jump for Glory".
Overall, this is a good film but it never reaches the level that it should. When I taught a constitutional law tutorial on ministerial responsibility last year, I described the Profumo affair to the students (none of whom seemed to have heard of it) as a real life Cold War thriller involving a showgirl, a Minister of the Crown, a Soviet spy and a film star. Sadly, this film is not as exciting as I made the real thing sound.
The film's strength lies in the acting. John Hurt gives a brilliant performance as Stephen Ward, the social climbing osteopath and artist who uses girls such as Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies to increase his status by introducing them to prominent men. In Keeler's case, the fact that he introduced her to both the Minister of War John Profumo and the Russian naval attaché / spy Eugene Ivanov was the source of the trouble. In the film, Ward is not depicted as being a very good man. In fact, he is a rather unsavoury sort whom my mother would describe as "a dirty devil." He seems to care about no one but himself. Keeler is fond of him but I think that his affection for her is limited to what he thought that she could for him. However, he is never as interesting or compelling a character as he could be as the writing is somewhat lacking. That said, the film did a good job in eliciting sympathy towards the end when his "friends" abandon him and he is put on trial for living off immoral earnings or, to put it more simply, being a pimp. In the film's final scene, Ward's suicide is depicted when he takes a drug overdose, no longer able to cope with the pressure of the trial and the constant hounding of the press. He was found guilty in absentia shortly before his death but the result has been severely criticised due to the lack of evidence against him and it is currently under review. There was plenty of blame to go around but the bulk of it was shouldered by Ward, which was unfair. On the other hand, Profumo was able to rebuild his reputation to a certain extent due to his charity work. The cynical part of me tends to think that that was the main reason why he did it.
I had never seen Joanne Whalley in anything before but I was very impressed by her performance of Christine Keeler, the last surviving major participant in the scandal. The film depicts Keeler as a troubled young woman, barely more than a child when she meets Ward and moves in with him. Ward does not force her into having relationships with numerous men but he does subtly manipulate her into doing so. She was hardly a naive person in spite of her youth but she trusted him more than he deserved and he let her down. I can't blame her for going to the press in the circumstances. Ian McKellen is extremely good as Profumo, whom the film does not hesitate to portray in a very negative light, but he has surprisingly little screen time. Bridget Fonda has seldom been better than as Mandy Rice-Davies, who delivered the immortal line, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" during Ward's trial, even if her English accent does occasionally slip. It also features great performances from the perfectly cast Leslie Phillips as Lord Astor, Jereon Krabbé as Ivanov, Deborah Grant as Profumo's heartbroken, humiliated wife Valerie Hobson (the former film star best known for her roles in "Bride of Frankenstein" and "Great Expectations" (1946)), Daniel Massey as Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Iain Cuthbertson as Lord Hailsham, Jean Alexander as Mrs. Keeler, Alex Norton and Paul Brooke as the police officers and Trevor Eve as the American erstwhile matinée idol David Fairfax, Jr., who is no way, shape or form based on Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Showing that it really is a very small world, both Hobson and Fairbanks, Jr. appeared in the 1937 film "Jump for Glory".
Overall, this is a good film but it never reaches the level that it should. When I taught a constitutional law tutorial on ministerial responsibility last year, I described the Profumo affair to the students (none of whom seemed to have heard of it) as a real life Cold War thriller involving a showgirl, a Minister of the Crown, a Soviet spy and a film star. Sadly, this film is not as exciting as I made the real thing sound.