There is absolutely no doubt that we are living in a time where politics and political party affiliations brand you and set you against your fellow man. If you are a Republican, then you must be a racist misogynist MAGA supporter of pedophiles, and if you are a Democrat, then you are a Liberal out of touch moron who must be stupid to think things were better before the current administration. Everyone is at each other’s throats, and no one is in the right. The Supreme Court ruled that the President of the United States has immunity from acts performed while in his position of Commander in Chief, and those who listened to that judgment in disbelief scratched their heads and asked: If that is the case, then why did Nixon resign office? Shouldn’t he have felt that he was immune from prosecution because he was the President? Good question; one that we still don’t have a definitive answer to despite what the Supreme Court ruled.
All the President’s Men was released in 1976, just a few short years after the political fallout of Watergate and the Nixon administration. It came at a time when people were still reeling from all that they heard in the news about government coverups and deception. It fueled the fires of conspiracy theorists and doomsayers who felt that no one in the government was to be trusted, and if you tried to expose their lies, you would be open to surveillance, maybe even targeted for elimination. Suddenly, we were seeing shady men in dark coats and fedoras hiding in the shadows, spying on American citizens who dared question the government. This hasn’t changed in the fifty years since this film was released. We hear all the time in podcasts, news outlets, and everywhere else where people get their biases confirmed that Big Brother is listening in, and if you show any dissent, then you may be flagged for elimination.
Do I believe any of that? Not really. Did Watergate and the subsequent fallout start this kind of thinking? Not really. But it did add fuel to the fire, and people have been running with it ever since. I first saw this film as a high school assignment, part of a lesson that involved the Nixon administration and his resignation. Memories of that viewing are hazy—I wasn’t the best at paying attention during history classes—but I remember the basics. I also remembered that this film made those in my class, myself included, angry that there were people in power, elected officials, that put their own ambitions above the good of this country. We were naive back then. Many of us are far more jaded now and assume that anyone in an elected office did so for their own ambitions and not to better the world around them. It therefore becomes a difficult, if not impossible, task to look at a film like All the President’s Men without getting political to some degree.
The film opens with the Watergate break-in and five men being caught in the act of placing bugs in the Democratic National Committee headquarters within the Watergate hotel. The following morning, The Washington Post assigns new reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) to the local courthouse to cover the story, believing it to be of minor importance. Shortly afterwards, Woodward learns that the five men—James W. McCord Jr. and four Cuban-Americans from Miami—were caught in possession of electronic bugging equipment and are being represented by a high-priced “country club” attorney. McCord identifies himself as having recently left the CIA, and the others are revealed to also have CIA ties. Woodward is able to connect them to E. Howard Hunt, an employee of President Nixon’s White House Counsel Charles Colson, and formerly of the CIA.
Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), another Post reporter, is assigned to work with Woodward on the Watergate story. While they are reluctant to work together, they eventually begin to understand each other and gel effectively. But despite their best efforts, no one wants to go on record and name names, and Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee (Jason Robards) believes that their work lacks reliable sources, unworthy of the Post’s front page. A shadowy figure known only as Deep Throat is nudging Woodward in the right direction but won’t go on record or reveal his identity. Meanwhile, people Bob and Carl try to interview either shut the door in their faces, hang up on them, or get scared and clam up.
Eventually, though, their determination pays dividends, and they get enough information to satisfy Bradlee, and The Post runs their story. But of course, as soon as they do, everyone named in the article denies involvement, and a smear campaign against the Post and Bob and Carl specifically, happens. But more information starts to get out, implicating the White House, and, as history tells us, President Nixon ends up resigning his office, leaving room for Gerald Ford to step in as the new President, who, in turn, pardons Nixon in the name of helping the United States heal and move on.
This is of course based on a true story, from the book All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Robert Redford was interested in making a film about this story well before the book was written and published. He approached Carl with the idea of making a low-budget film with no-name stars in it, focused on the point-of-view of the reporters. While Carl was receptive to the idea, he was also mired in legal issues at the time—this was happening as the story was still ongoing—and didn’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to an actor making a film. Later, he gave Redford some time to look through notes, articles, and pieces of information relevant to the story but also informed him that he and Carl were writing a book and if he, Redford, wanted to make a film, then it would have to be by convincing their studio to buy up the rights to the book.
By going this route, the film could no longer be a low-budget affair with unknowns in the leads. The film transformed into the one we all know today with Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the leads and populated with a lot of well-known character actors with long careers in some of the greatest dramas of all time. Alan J. Pakula was brought in to direct, adding this film to the end of his critically acclaimed “Paranoia trilogy”, an unofficial series that included Klute and The Parallax View.
In order to avoid making this film too unwieldy, the focus was narrowed down to the first seven months of the Watergate scandal and not the aftermath of these events. We see Nixon’s second inauguration but not his resignation; the only mention of this is in print right before the credits. This choice not only allows the film to focus on just one part of the narrative but keeps the film from getting bogged down in the details. Instead, we get to see the dogged determination of Woodward and, especially, Bernstein as they track down names on a list, deal with the frustrations of leads that don’t want to speak to them, and piece together details from incomplete information.
Redford has the unenviable task of playing the inexperienced reporter here. He’s new to the job and has been assigned a story that turns out to be beyond his ability. He is eager and determined but doesn’t have the writing chops for such a big story and is initially upset that a more experienced reporter steps in and rewrites his work. He’s also humble enough to realize that Carl is the better writer and, though they initially clash some, he comes to realize they need each other. At first, Bob is the less glamorous character to play, but as the story plays out, Bob contributes a great deal to the investigation. He is the one who makes contact with Deep Throat, and it is he who finally pushes Deep Throat to take a more active role in providing information needed to expose the truth about Watergate and how the FBI knew stuff that they didn’t bother to pursue.
Alas, this is not a perfect film. We get little to no back story on either of the leads. What we can glean is sporadic and often just inferred. They’re not caricatures, nor are they shallow or cardboard, but they are not fleshed out all that well, either. This film has enough tunnel vision to keep it focused on the investigation without giving us any extraneous character information. It can be argued that this isn’t strictly necessary for this story, and I won’t argue the point. I just wish we had a little more, like motivations beyond exposing the truth. The film is also a showcase for why the MPAA ratings system is a broken system. It was initially rated R for harsh language, then re-rated to PG before release, without edits, because the story was considered too important for a restricted rating.
This main reason this was considered so important at the time was because it was coming so close on the heels of the real events. People needed a release for their frustrations with the government, and while this film doesn’t focus excessively on that, it does provide some answers. It’s all too easy to dismiss this film as about events that happened more than fifty years ago and therefore no longer relevant, but that kind of attitude is how we end up repeating history. Republican, Democrat, it matters not. We have checks and balances in place to hold our leaders responsible for their actions. Through the actions of these two reporters, among others, the right people were held accountable, and the President was forced to resign office. Nixon knew he was guilty and left office to avoid being removed from it. This film gives us some of the reasons why. For the rest, the book is still out there and goes into far more detail on that subject.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Walter Coblenz
Best Director: Alan J. Pakula
Best Supporting Actor: Jason Robards (won)
Best Supporting Actress: Jane Alexander
Best Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium: William Goldman (won)
Best Art Direction: George C. Jenkins and George Gaines (won)
Best Film Editing: Robert L. Wolfe
Best Sound: Arthur Piantadosi, Les Fresholtz, Dick Alexander, and James E. Webb (won)
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Release Date: April 9, 1976
Running Time: 138 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, and Jason Robards
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
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