All the President’s Men (1976)

Could this be the greatest film about journalism ever made?  

It’s certainly one of the most celebrated investigations of one of the greatest political scandals in American history.   We follow two young reporters from the Washington Post – Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – as they exhaustively get to the bottom of not only whom was behind the infamous 1972 break-in at the National Democratic Party headquarters as the Watergate Hotel, but who was covering it up….and how that went, all the way to the White House. 

Robert Redford plays Woodward, Dustin Hoffman plays Bernstein, and they are joined by a stellar cast of veteran actors including Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander, Jack Warden, and Martin Balsam.  Alan J. Pakula directed this classic thriller,

Let’s follow the money and see where it leads…..

Host: Geoff Gershon 
Producer: Marlene Gershon

https://livingforthecinema.com/

#livingforthecinema #moviereviews #watergate #watergatehotel #nixon #allthepresidentsmen #bobwoodward #carlbernstein #robertredford #dustinhoffman #washingtonpost #nationaldemocraticparty #1972 #jasonrobards #halholbrook #janealexander #jackwarden #martinbalsam #alanpakula #scandal #politicalthriller

Chapters

• 0:40 Title, Year, Director
• 0:48 Trailer, Starring, Genre
• 1:47 Review Start
• 11:03 1st Category: Best Needle Drop
• 12:23 2nd Category: Wasted Talent
• 13:51 3rd Category: Trailer Moment
• 15:25 4th Category: MVP
• 19:08 Geoff's Movie Rating
• 19:33 Availability
• 19:38 End Credits

Transcript

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN - 1976

Directed by Alan J. Pakula (Audio clip)

Starring Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, Lindsey Crouse, and Stephen Collins 

Genre: Political Conspiracy Thriller

How can a film be so dense with information and yet SO rewatchable at the same time? On paper, this docudrama about the long-term investigation by the Washington Post into the Watergate break-in (and cover-up) shouldn't be NEARLY as entertaining as it turns out to be. We spend pretty much all of its 138-minute runtime following our two intrepid reporters Woodward (Redford) and Bernstein (Hoffman) as they make awkward phone calls....scan through long print-outs of names....get grilled at their desks by various middle-aged superiors wearing white buttoned-down shirts...and constantly having doors closed in their faces as they visit the homes of various strangers. With just a few rewrites, this could be a dramatization of the life of a Jehovah's Witness....or an Amway salesperson pre-Internet. :o

But it's a much more important story of course and all the more cinematic for all of the AMAZING talent involved in front of and behind the camera. The late, great Alan J. Pakula directed this just a couple of years after directing the seminal paranoia thriller The Parallax View with Warren Beatty...and he brings a lot of the same labyrinthine conspiracy sensibilities to this thriller/procedural. And it helps that he's working with a top-flight group of collaborators…

 To start, you had PEAK Redford not only starring as Woodward but producing - he helped put this whole project together, and bear in mind that this film was released barely two years after President Nixon's resignation so they weren't wasting any time and everything being dramatized was STILL pretty fresh. :o And Redford's portrayal of Woodward - who evolves from fresh-faced journalist to seasoned investigator - is very well-realized. (Audio clip) 

 He has great chemistry with Hoffman as the more aggressive, seen-some-shit grinder Bernstein who's just not gonna take no for an answer from any potential source. (Audio clip) It's just an ideal combination of acting styles - Hoffman's wiry method energy and Redford's almost regal matinee-idol underplaying - and one of the great joys of this movie and one aspect which prevents it from being a dry procedural is watching how these two personas team up to take on a seemingly ENDLESS parade of Washington characters through their investigation. Higher-ups, accountants, lawyers, filing clerks, secretaries...all with varying levels of paranoia.

Only some are even aware that they might be part of a conspiracy related to the Watergate break-in while the rest are often even unsure of what the big deal might be...the early perception of this incident was that it was just a low-stakes crime, just some thugs committing a robbery. But the more folks we watch our intrepid reporters go to question, the more urgency this story starts to take on. And we see how that level of urgency eventually rubs off on Redford’s Woodward who initially comes off as the more dignified of the two. And vice versa as Bernstein witnesses how Redford's slick polish potentially opens more doors, Hoffman’s portrayal starts to dial things down a bit. 

 And boy do they encounter some characters....portrayed by a loaded cast of familiar faces who leave distinct impressions with limited screentime including Robert Walden, Stephen Collins, Ned Beatty, Meredith Baxter, Lindsay Crouse, Jane Alexander, and of course the late, great Hal Holbrook playing the mysterious Deep Throat. Holbrook himself walks such a tricky tightrope considering we can hardly see him nor even get a direct answer from most of anything he says....but just his pointed demeanor and delivery says a LOT. (Audio clip) What Deep Throat is basically doing is passive-aggressively goading Redford's Woodward into doing the legwork to get to the bottom of something that he himself knows too much about....until he gives the "Wood-Stein" pair the final piece they need towards the end. 

Let's not also forget the LEGENDARY trio of character actors playing the editorial staff of 'The Post - Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, and
 Jason Robards. (Audio clip) Sadly each of them are no longer with us but seriously if you came of age during the '80s and '90s, you would be hard-pressed to find a major crime drama on TV or at the movies which didn't feature ONE of these guys as a detective, DA, judge, or corporate executive. These guys just OOZE wisdom and authority...none more so than two-time Oscar-winner Robards portraying real-life journalism titan Ben Bradlee, then the Executive Editor of the Washington Post. 

Robards along with Alexander were the only two from this stacked cast to receive Oscar nominations and justifiably, he won Best Supporting Actor. And Robards is just such a delight! His Ben Bradlee is both seemingly sleep-deprived and skeptical most of the time yet you can feel the occasional subtle kick of excitement he gets as this story starts to come together - his exchanges with Redford and Hoffman are definitely among this film's highlights. (Audio clip) 

Beyond that, this film just LOOKS amazing thanks to stellar work from the late, great cinematographer Gordon Willis who served as DP on the first two Godfather films just a few years before this. :o His lens makes the most of suburban kitchens, dimly lit parking garages, endless rows of starkly lit newsroom cubicles....on paper, it might seem mundane but it never feels that way. Willis almost always keeps things laser-focused on at least one of our two protagonists even as we might just see one of them typing furiously in the background. Of course, even amidst so much seemingly non-cinematic drudgery, he's also allowed some great flourishes as we still get that now-famous shot of the Library of Congress Reading Room. We see the camera slowly pull away from over our protagonists doing research at one table, eventually revealing several concentric circular tables all around them. Personally, I can't think of a better visualization for a couple of underdogs hopelessly trying to crack open the truth within a GIANT wheel of power and corruption. ;) 

Best Needle drop (best song cue or score used throughout the runtime of the film): 

And speaking of that sequence in the Library of Congress, it also serves as one of the rare instances when we actually hear music during this movie.  Yeah, this is a tough category for this movie as it’s often VERY quiet with very little score.  But there was in fact a minimalist score composed for this movie and it’s from one of my favorite composers of the 1970s, David Shire.  Shire delivered some great music for several great movies throughout this decade including The Taking of Pelham 123 (the original), The Conversation, and the previous episode Saturday Night Fever.  We don’t hear much outside of some spare orchestration mostly utilizing horns and piano but it succeeds in helping to maintain a tense tone of much of this movie…..and never more so than what we hear as the camera pulls us over that reading room….. (Audio clip) 

Wasted Talent (most under-utilized talent involved with film): 

It probably goes without saying that I don’t really find there to be any wasted talent with this movie so I’ll take this category in a different direction.  It’s pretty astounding that 45 years later, All the President’s Men is still quoted, studied, and celebrated….and deservedly so.  But….it wasn’t the only movie to try to tell this story, well from an accuracy standpoint it might have been.

NOW if you’re seeking a more comedic, more satirical angle to this story….a small gem of a comedy came out in ’99 called Dick (referring to President Richard Nixon by the way), a film that was criminally underrated and underseen.  It starred Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams as two teenage girls who inadvertently uncover the Watergate break-in one night AND befriend President Richard M. Nixon himself played delightfully by Dan Hedaya.  Yes, all of this is heavily fictionalized but damn if it isn’t funny.  And in Dick, we also see comically exaggerated versions of Woodward and Bernstein played by Will Ferrell and Bruce McCullough respectively….and as we see them in several sequences which are parallel to ones in All the President’s Men, the result is just pure comedic gold!   If you’re looking for a hysterical companion piece to this movie, you just can’t go wrong with Dick….also likely to be covered in a future episode. (Audio clip) 

Trailer Moment (scene or moment that best describes this movie): 

My personal favorite has to be about 2/3 of the way through as Robards' Bradlee tells Wood-Stein his now-famous anecdote about getting publicly embarrassed with a story about J. Edgar Hoover....just before giving them the go-ahead to publish their first major story with revelations about John Mitchell controlling the CRP fund, a story that started to bust things open back in '72. And he ends this scene with a simple line of dialogue, "Run that baby." before he saunters off in his tuxedo.....seemingly off to some upscale function. (Audio clip) It's about as quiet a moment of triumph as you can have but it works perfectly for this movie. :) 

MVP (person or people most responsible for the success of this film): 

This film rarely has any particularly loud moments nor moments of high drama....but just percolates throughout thanks not only to confident direction by Pakula but also its screenplay by the legendary William Goldman. As I said, this story is DENSE but Goldman's structure clarifies it, wisely focusing on just the first year of this investigation basically taking us through Nixon's second inauguration at the beginning of '73....at least ten months BEFORE the major convictions for conspiracy began. We never see Woodward or Bernstein relishing any of these moments of triumph real-time and that's by design – thanks to the genius of Goldman’s screenplay, we only see them in the underdog phase, grinding it out to get there.

And not only is this film structured well but the dialogue just pops.  Pretty much everyone on-screen speaks like intelligent adults but never in an uber-clever way which calls attention to itself….like something written by Aaron Sorkin….on his worst days at least.  Most of it comes through conversation, we often get vivid portrayals of all levels of this cover-up as much from what people DON’T say as from what they do say.  All through dialogue, we especially see this ramp up from Woodward and Bernstein as they keep finding clever ways to get information through the process of elimination….just brilliant stuff! (Audio clip)

The performances, the direction, the visuals…..it all works in perfect concert but NONE of it would reach the heights this film does without it FIRST being on the page.  The screenplay was adapted by the non-fiction book of the same name written by….yup you guessed it by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  And it’s a great book….but here’s the thing, it covers EVERY aspect of the investigation all the way through Nixon’s resignation in 1974.  Goldman – who along with Redford consulted with Woodward on transitioning this into a watchable movie - ended up making ALL of the right decisions not only to keep it grounded but cinematic.  And for his work, Goldman justifiably won the Oscar that year for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Goldman left us just a few years ago in 2018 and he left ONE hell of a legacy as a screenwriter – in the same year as All the President’s Men, he ALSO wrote the screenplay for the dazzling thriller Marathon Man….also starring Dustin Hoffman and also a previous episode, check it out.  Beyond that, he built up a hell of a track record over several decades….often adapting other people’s work but still resulting in cracking screenplays for classic movies….Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Misery, The Princess Bride, The Stepford Wives, Papillon, A Bridge Too Far, and an underrated gem from the ‘90’s that I happen to love, The Ghost and the Darkness.  Running through all of these films, his characters are generally flawed, funny, resourceful, and all too relatable – Goldman has earned his place among the great Hollywood writers and for delivering what might be his all-time best screenplay, he is the MVP. (Audio clip) 

Final Rating: 5 stars out of 5

Forty-five years after it was first released, All the President's Men remains a triumph for all involved....one of the best films of the 1970s and also likely THE best cinematic representation of journalism that we're ever likely to see. That it does so with minimal flash is all the more impressive!

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LIVING FOR THE CINEMA

Host: Geoff Gershon 
Producer: Marlene Gershon

https://livingforthecinema.com/

#livingforthecinema #moviereviews #watergate #nixon #allthepresidentsmen #bobwoodward #carlbernstein #robertredford #dustinhoffman #washingtonpost #nationaldemocraticparty #1972 #jasonrobards #halholbrook #janealexander #jackwarden #martinbalsam #alanpakula #scandal #politicalthriller