#57: ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

3.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, once, a long time ago

BEST SEQUENCE

Any scene of Woodward meeting with Deep Throat

BEST LINE

"Follow the money"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"A taut, solidly acted paean to the benefits of a free press and the dangers of unchecked power, made all the more effective by its origins in real-life events."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Richard Nixon's resignation."

DIRECTOR

Alan J. Pakula

MAIN CAST

Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Jane Alexander

THOUGHTS

• We're here to assess movies based on the thrills that they deliver, and I've grappled with this a few times - occasionally there's a difference between how effectively a movie tells its story compared to how thrilling it's even able to be. All the President's Men is an intriguing depiction of the journalistic investigation into one of the biggest presidential scandals of all time, but there's also a ceiling to how intense this sort of thing can get
• Most people have at least heard of Watergate, but just in case there are some people who don't really know what happened, here's a summary from a History.com article: "The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents." And, as revealed in the movie, the Watergate break-in may have kicked off the investigation, and it gave the scandal its name, but it was much further reaching than just that one event. There was a whole series of political sabotage and espionage, that Nixon was aware of and tried to cover up, leading to his resignation
• In showing the investigation and research done by Woodward and Bernstein, though, there are a LOT of names to keep track of, and it's not always obvious which names are the important ones to keep in mind. This may have been easier when the movie came out, shortly after the scandal actually occurred, but not so much 50 years later. It is interesting to see what this sort of journalism would have been like in the 70s, though, a lot of phone calls and in-person meetings, typewriters clacking and notes taken by hand
• I mentioned it briefly just now, I found it interesting to think about the movie being made so soon after the events it was based on. Nixon resigned in August of '74, and the movie came out in April of '76. I couldn't really think of many other movies that were made so soon after the real events they were based on, aside from Zero Dark Thirty which came out one year and seven months after Bin Laden's death
• Redford and Hoffman are both quite good, but my favourite performance is from Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee the executive editor of The Washington Post. Robards gets a lot of the best lines, all delivered in his distinctive low, rumbly voice. He also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, while Redford and Hoffman weren't even nominated
• However, speaking of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, we'll be seeing more of both of them soon. Redford will be in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, movie #54, and Hoffman will be in Marathon Man, movie #50. And, perhaps even more impressive, that's not even the only connection between these movies. The screenplay for All the President's Men was written by William Goldman, who also wrote not only the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and not only the screenplay for Marathon Man, but he even wrote the novel that Marathon Man was adapted from. This is without even mentioning all the other great movies he wrote, including two of my favourites, Misery and The Princess Bride (and also the novel The Princess Bride, while we're at it)
• Finally, as a depiction of journalistic investigation based on true events, I kept being reminded of some other more recent movies, especially Spotlight and The Post. The Post, in particular, has strong echoes of All the President's Men, which is pretty understandable considering they're both about investigations at the exact same newspaper, and even with Ben Bradlee as a primary character, played by Tom Hanks in the later movie

Up next: Just like when I watched Dracula, I'm excited to watch another classic monster movie from 1931 that I've never seen - it's time for Frankenstein