advise and condense . by W J Weatherby . at a recent Washington party a garrulous American egghead tried to explain the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives to confused foreign visitors . but the more he tried the more confused his audience looked - and at last , too deep into references to populations , finance , and presidential recommendations , he began to sound confused himself . it was like a symbolical explanation of why so many outsiders fail to understand American politics and why - to them - the presidential leadership sometimes looks less decisive than it really is . one of the best popular accounts of the complex system of checks and balances in operation in Washington is Allen Drury &apos;s recent best seller , advise and consent , and even that was too involved and tortuous for some foreign readers . the decision then to make a massive Hollywood production of Mr Drury &apos;s novel is like a challenge to succeed where so many others have failed , for to be a success - artistically as well as financially - the film will have to be true to the reality of Washington and yet be simple enough for international audiences to understand . as the director , Otto Preminger , began to film recently in Washington , our old friends reality and illusion were busy providing some choice examples of their relationship in film terms . they met head-on at one party when an actor playing a senator learnt that the stranger he was chatting with was a real senator . the Hollywood senator had a noble looking image - as public relations prose sometimes puts it - and the gracious manners of an old plantation patriarch , whereas the real senator had the kind of untypical and unsaleable personality that might belong to a shopkeeper or a millionaire and would not get heroic film billing anywhere outside a home movie . the senator looked too right , almost as the outsider might have expected him to look , whereas the real one had an unexpectedness about him , as if he could not possibly be cast as anyone but himself . much of the gap between illusion and reality is caused by the problem of time . Mr Drury &apos;s President and senators who reveal themselves gradually through 760 pages ( at least in the American paperback edition ) have had to be transformed into Mr Preminger &apos;s Franchot Tone , Don Murray , Lew Ayres , and the rest of an experienced team who can make the most of their split-second timing to create their characters in a matter of minutes . the real test of the film in the end will be how much has had to be oversimplified or glossed over to keep up with the clock . Mr Drury chose a comparatively melodramatic incident - the selection of a controversial Secretary of state and the conflict between the White House and much of the Senate over it - and threw in a few skeletons in the senatorial cupboards to show off when the reader got too bogged down in the political manoeuvres . Mr Drury , a former political reporter in Washington for the New York Times , is a great believer in the moderates &apos; way in politics , and his book in one way is a tribute to his belief , in that it was moderate enough in tone to be fair even to extremists like the arch conservative from the south , Seab Cooley . Charles Laughton , who still has a Yorkshire ring to his voice , described his preparation for playing Cooley as an Eliza Doolittle job . he studied the right accent with a phonetics expert and did some extra homework in conversation with some real senators from the south . in the only scene I saw him play , he made his point with lightning professional speed and also managed a suggestion of an iceberg of character waiting to be revealed under the surface . this was clearly how to make the most of the time and how best to try to bridge the old reality-illusion gap . whether or not Mr Drury &apos;s moderate tone will be preserved in the speed-up will depend very much on Mr Preminger , and if he loses it , the ill-informed abroad may simply become the misinformed , with Washington seeming a melodramatic circus rather than the complex meeting-place of all the states , the focus of a nation &apos;s myriad viewpoints . Mr Preminger &apos;s deep Austrian roots may help him there for although now an American citizen , he may see Washington with both an experienced eye and an objective one , which will enable him to find its essence without getting lost in detail or disastrously overglossing . his record suggests he is a believer in best-sellers as a basis for a film , and a man who knows him suggests this is because he usually becomes excited about one of the characters . this is probably the former actor coming out in him , and certainly on the set he often gives the impression of a caged actor on the wrong side of the camera yearning to give a performance himself . this may explain why sometimes his films let personality do the work of imagination and perhaps why they are generally so well cast . in advise and consent , for example , he has chosen a group of mature film actors - men like Ayres , Tone , Fonda , Pidgeon , not to mention Laughton - who could act most of the younger stars today off the screen . the Preminger name seemed to be unlocking most doors in Washington . how refreshing then it was for reality to assert itself in the person of a little tailor . one of Mr Preminger &apos;s assistants went along to his shop to hire some tuxedos for the big banquet scene and assumed he - or rather Mr Preminger - would naturally be given credit . the Preminger name worked no miracles with the little man ( he was only little physically ) and he threw in for good measure that he would need cash even if the President of the United States came in to hire a tuxedo . his image was n&apos;t smooth or glossy or predictable , but , oh , my goodness , he was alive . if only all those foreign outsiders could grasp he is more typical of Americans than any of the politicians ( even President Kennedy ) or any of the film stars ( even President Tone ) , perhaps reality would win after all . Franco Zeffirelli . by Gareth Lloyd Evans . Franco Zeffirelli , whose explosive production of Romeo and Juliet shook the Old Vic out of its Shakespearean sloth , is now at Stratford on Avon setting the fuses for Othello , which opens next week . yet , in spite of what we saw at the Old Vic , our expectations for Othello , and his very name ( like a hissing firework ) he only occasionally fulfils prognostications of a mercurial Italian . without his long leather black jacket ( redolent of Florentine back-street conspiracy ) he could be mistaken for a tired young English director uniformed in the easy darkness of black slacks , black sneakers , and dull pullover . his accent is slight , his voice even-toned , his gestures spare . the eyes are restless , but sometimes pause on you with disconcerting acuteness . he slips into first acquaintance easily , and smokes Salems like a furnace . from his Romeo and Juliet one might expect a vivid staccato modern with the customary irreverence for tradition , but the great surprise is his imaginative , eloquent feel for historical process , and his sense of western civilisation as an entity . he seems to feel his own presence in England now as a reflection of an historical logic which made sixteenth-century England the natural heir of the Florentine renaissance - this is not conceit , but an implied affirmation of the staying power of cultural unity . Florence was the starting-point of western culture , and for him personally . he studied architecture there and began his theatre work directing opera in Siena . he mentions other Italian cities ( the Romans were the whores of western civilisation ) but Florence penetrates his conversation . it is easy , say , for a Florentine to accept foreigners , but they do not usually see the reality behind the fa&amp;ccedil;ade of Tuscan easy-going optimism . it hides a preoccupation with death , a questioning of what life means , and a practical attitude towards art . for Zeffirelli , the genius of the Florentine renaissance lies in its workmanship - the Tuscans do not believe in fairy tales . Shakespeare , he knows , could never have been in Italy , or he would have realised all this . Romeo and Juliet is very un-Italian - there are many English girls like Juliet . an Italian girl would never dare to do what she did - they are too practical . but as you like it is very Florentine , and full of a workmanlike questioning . as he said this he gouged a geometrical pattern on the posh tablecloth of the theatre restaurant . he believes himself to be a typical Florentine . a limited stake in the bard might be inferred from the fact that he has directed , in England , two of Shakespeare &apos;s Mediterranean plays . he firmly repudiates this . he will probably direct Hamlet soon . this should be an event worth waiting for . his approach to a play is to discover one simple idea , the creative idea , like a poet . the idea for Romeo and Juliet was the irresponsibility of young love pushed into tragedy by Shakespeare . Othello is the sentimental tragedy of a cultivated , brave man who comes to love too late , and does not know what to do with it . it is a tragedy not to know what to do with love . Zeffirelli does not mention the colour of Othello &apos;s skin , but his knife traced another geometrical pattern . he gets an idea , and must stick to it . in the face of this , I tempted disaster by raising the bogy of cutting Shakespeare , and scholarly interpretation . the former he shrugged away , and I assumed that , for him , the idea justifies the means . with the latter he toyed for an instant , then , his smile tightening into patience , he gave the benefice of the preservation of a tradition to the scholar . in spite of his apparently complete immersion in theatre , there is a paradox in his character . he seems unhappy inside the core of his response to all that art means in terms of beauty , vitality , and work . he complained that he is always surrounded by theatre people , but one suspects that he would wither away if taken away for too long . it may be that his ubiquitous talent ( he supervises costume down to the last buttonhole ) exhausts him . it may be that he is typically Florentine , fighting death along the theatre &apos;s shore-line of make-believe . one &apos;s guess is that the war ( he was a partisan ) left him immeasurably fearful of what man can do to man . he spoke bitterly of Germany . the only Brecht play he would consider directing is Mother Courage . alienation is contrary to all his beliefs about art and men , but there is more to it than this . Brecht is the Wagner of modern Germany . Germany has done terrible things to the soul of man . perhaps it is sympathetic fear which prompts his friendliness to other people . he is at home with scene-shifters , ASMs , and strangers who stop to ask about his high-powered sports car . he thinks of a theatre in terms of a family . in so far as he can be content , he is so in the British theatre . you have the best theatre in the world , the best actors , the best audiences . under pressure he admits some Stratford audiences seemed dead , but English audiences are the best &amp;hellip; . English people live in a pattern , and theatre-going is part of that pattern . he admires English actors for their discipline , but they have weaknesses . what they were he did not say , except obscurely to declare that you can not separate the artistic and personal life . when the conversation turned away from Shakespeare , from the unequivocally great in the art or the intensely human , Zeffirelli &apos;s mind seemed to drop several degrees in temperature . yes , he knew about Wesker and Delaney ; yes , they seemed powerful , but all report . the trouble was that they were too late , old-fashioned . all this naturalism , he says , has been done such a long time ago in France and elsewhere . but , implying and mitigating their weakness in one breath , he added that perhaps at the beginning of any movement you had to have roughness , where things have to be hacked out , until everything runs smoothly . 