Milton Berle, sweating (literally) his way through a dramatic role impressively, is let down by a less than scintillating script in this portrait for Chrysler Theatre of a man under pressure, nearly on the verge of a breakdown.
It's tough to care about him, playing the campaign manager of a politician, with everything crumbling all around him. Unlike stronger material, say Miller's "Death of a Salesman", a ho-hum screenplay cannot get viewer's sympathy for a functionary in politics -nothing heroic or easy to identify with here. Worse yet, many scenes are literally phoned in, with Berle constantly yapping long-distance, far from cinematic.
When his character reaches rock bottom, the script falls apart and rushes to a Pyrrhic victory for the man, completely unsatisfying for the audience. It's a wasted hour, filming a script that should have been rejected.
It's tough to care about him, playing the campaign manager of a politician, with everything crumbling all around him. Unlike stronger material, say Miller's "Death of a Salesman", a ho-hum screenplay cannot get viewer's sympathy for a functionary in politics -nothing heroic or easy to identify with here. Worse yet, many scenes are literally phoned in, with Berle constantly yapping long-distance, far from cinematic.
When his character reaches rock bottom, the script falls apart and rushes to a Pyrrhic victory for the man, completely unsatisfying for the audience. It's a wasted hour, filming a script that should have been rejected.
