James Hitchcock John Profumo, Minister of War in the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan, was forced to resign in 1963 when it was discovered that he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with Christine Keeler, a model-cum-dancer-cum-general-good-time-girl. More than fifty years on, the Profumo Affair still remains Britain's most notorious political sex scandal. It even rated a mention ("British politician, sex") in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". Other British politicians whose careers were ended or damaged by scandal- Tony Lambton, Jeremy Thorpe, Cecil Parkinson- are now largely forgotten figures. David Mellor remains in the public eye, but more as a radio personality than as an ex-politician, and few people today remember exactly why he was the subject of so much tabloid gossip in the early nineties.Profumo's name, however, lives on, possibly because the affair in which he was involved may actually have altered the course of history. In the general election of October 1964 (the film wrongly gives the date as November) Macmillan's successor Alec Douglas-Home was very narrowly defeated by Labour's Harold Wilson. Had his party not been embroiled in a lurid scandal the previous year, Douglas-Home might well have stayed in power and British politics in the late sixties could have been very different.In many ways the main character in the film is neither Profumo nor Keeler, but Stephen Ward, the man who first brought them together. Ward was, and still is, a controversial figure. I have never really bought into the theory that he was the innocent scapegoat of an Establishment frame-up, and I certainly would not agree with the reviewer who compared Ward with Timothy Evans. The comparison may have been suggested by the fact that both men were played by John Hurt (Evans in "Ten Rillington Place"), but the two cases were very different. Evans, who was hanged for a murder he did not commit, was the victim of an appalling miscarriage of justice. Ward, who committed suicide during his trial, may well have been guilty of the crime of which he was accused, living off the immoral earnings of a prostitute. (Keeler admitted accepting money from the men she slept with and then passing it to Ward; she always denied being a prostitute, but in the eyes of the law she probably was).Even if Ward was technically innocent of the charge he was nevertheless a rather louche, sleazy character. The son of a clergyman, he worked as an osteopath, a profession which brought him a decent living, but nevertheless had a side-line as pimp to the British Establishment, organising orgies and assignments for high-class gentlemen with low-class morals, of whom Profumo was one. He assumed that his friends in high places would protect him from the law and that, if friendship proved insufficient, his power to blackmail his clients would do the trick. After Profumo's downfall and the disgrace of several other personalities in the wake of the scandal, however, there was nobody left to protect him and he no longer held any secrets which had not already been revealed. The Establishment had no need to frame an innocent man; they merely flung a guilty one to the wolves.Both main female characters, Keeler and her friend and fellow good-time girl Mandy Rice-Davies, are played by actresses who seemed destined for stardom in the late eighties and early nineties, Joanne Whalley and Bridget Fonda. Neither really fulfilled their early promise, despite their good looks, Whalley's marriage to a major star (Val Kilmer) and Fonda's status as the heir to one of America's best-known acting dynasties. Fonda does not seem to have made any films since 2002, and although Whalley is still on the scene she does not really count as a big name these days.Both, however, are very good here. Whalley plays Keeler with a beguiling mixture of seductiveness and feigned innocence. (She had what was probably an unusual experience for her, playing a woman who was more beautiful than she was; whatever else Keeler might have been she was a striking beauty and, had her name not been tarnished by the scandal, might have become one of Britain's leading models). Fonda's Rice-Davis is a brash and cheeky youngster, able to raise a laugh even in the formal setting of a courtroom with her famous line "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" when it was put to her that Lord Astor (an associate of Profumo) had denied sleeping with her. Fonda also copes well with the challenge of a British accent.Hurt manages to raise a certain amount of sympathy, despite his obvious sleaziness, for Ward, a man who seems firmly in control and then suddenly finds his world collapsing about his ears. Ian McKellen is smoothly repellent as John Profumo, a man brought down as much by his arrogance as by his lust. "Scandal" is an entertaining history lesson, but it is also a study of the temptations and pitfalls of power. 7/10

GusF 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.

Matthew Kresal More then thirty years before Monica Lewinsky nearly destroyed Bill Clinton's presidency, Christine Keeler brought down the sitting British government. Her affair with then Minister Of War John Profumo, the scandal that followed and the effect it had on those involved is the subject of Michael Caton-Jones' 1989 film Scandal. Caton-Jones, with the help of a first rate cast and script, brings to life the scandal that brought down the British government.The film's cast is fantastic to say the least. Leading it is John Hurt as Osteopath/Playboy Stephen Ward and Joanne Whalley as the infamous Christine Keeler. Both are well cast, Whalley being a very good physical match for Keeler especially, and both give what seem to be honest performances as people who find themselves going from the time of the their lives to the worst moments of it. Right behind them are Bridget Fonda and Ian McKellen as the other two major players in the scandal: Mandy Rice-Davies and John Profumo respectively. The supporting cast includes Jeroen Krabbe as Soviet naval attaché Eugene Ivanov, Jean Alexander as Keeler's mother, Leslie Phillips as Bill aka Lord Astor and James Villiers as an MP. The cast is fantastic and helps to sell the realistic recreation of the scandal.The realism is also helped by the production values as well. The production design of Simon Holland and the costumes of Jane Robinson bring to life the late 1950s-early 1960s world of the film from lurid clubs to country estates and the halls of government. Mike Molloy's cinematography is key to much of the film as it often gives the viewer a feeling of being a fly on the wall of the events taking place. There are moments also where it gives the viewer a feeling of what it must have been like as the scandal grows and the world closes around some of the characters. Angus Newton's editing helps that as well even though the film itself seems to be just a bit too long. All of this, under the superb direction of Caton-Jones makes the film's recreation of this world seemingly complete.That wouldn't the case though without the script. Drawing from a number of different sources listed towards the end of the film's end credits, Scandal traces the journey from 1959 to 1963 as what starts out as Ward's attempt to introduce the beautiful, young Keeler to his friends in high places leads to a scandal that destroys the sitting British government. The script by Michael Thomas is more then just a simple accounting of the scandal though. It is a study of the different people involved in it and how, by accident more then design, then found themselves caught up in it. Scandal takes the viewer into a world of sex, booze and above all else hypocrisy. This is no better illustrated then in a scene early in the film where a group (including Ward and Keeler) are in a nightclub, surrounded by scantily clad women, celebrating the victory of the Conservative government in the 1959 UK general election. The result is an eye opening journey into the human side of an infamous political scandal.From its first rate cast, production values, direction and script Scandal is a fine example of history being brought to life on film. It is a journey into a world of sex, booze and hypocrisy that bred an infamous scandal that brought down a sitting British government almost fifty years ago. It is also a journey into the human cost of that scandal told in a way that is haunting, realistic and perhaps even truthful as well.

pvn9 This is an excellent movie on the political scandal that hit UK in 1960s. No wonder so many British actors rejected to act in this movie. The central character in this story is about this beautiful girl (Bridget Fonda) and her relation with several prominent British politicians of her time along with a Russian diplomat. It shows the underlying facts and ironies of British political system. While watching the movie one is spell-bound from beginning to the end. This movie is about people and their relations with other people. The scene where Bridget Fonda is running from one man to the other (fresh out of swimming pool) sums up the movie in fact. No, I am not talking of glamor associated with Fonda running around. The scene expresses the sense of the movie in a nutshell. It is a story of a woman who is trying to find her place in the world, about a man who can manipulate people to achieve his end, about a scandalous politician, in fact about so many colorful people that it is impossible to specify here. Please watch the movie if you ever get a chance. If you like intrigue, drama, corruption and beautiful women, not to mention political scandals, then it is the movie for you. This is the perfect movie for late night over the weekends! I have decided to give it nine stars, but it could easily have been ten....