Back to the era of the 70s. Lots of films from this era on the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition), and my careful plotting of not watching films from the same era has yielded a couple of points where I'm flopping back and forth between two eras. This is one of those blocs. I've been back and forth between what I called "Post-war- 1966," and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" - "Raging Bull." It's just the way I had to make it work. My rules make sense to me...and that's good enough.
Film 59
Taken from a seminal year in film history, 1976, Alan J. Pakula's film "All The President's Men" is yet another example of a brilliant film made in an incredible year. Detailing the story behind the breaking of the Watergate story, which eventually led to the ouster of a sitting President, this film is a taut, intelligent, often mind-boggling tale of tenacity, luck, and courage.
Robert Redford stars in this film as Bob Woodward, and it was he who helped bring this film to fruition, and the book that preceded it a reality. When details of Watergate started flowing from the Washington Post under the headings of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Redford went to the pair and bought the film rights to their story. He then, when they thought maybe they'd like to write a book, pushed them into telling their story, and not the story, necessarily, of the men in power whom they helped remove from power. Redford's instincts as an artist were right, and the story is much, much more compelling with the real "action" taking place in the background, as those chasing the action are shown throughout. It was a brave gamble, and it pays off.
If you're looking for action in this, good luck. This is an intelligent film, and while it begins with a fairly exciting scene depicting the physical reality of the Watergate break-in, the real action of the Watergate scandal is always peripheral to what we see on screen after that. Interesting trivia: the break-in scene features Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior from "The Sopranos") as one of the perpetrators and F. Murray Abraham (Best Actor Oscar winner for his portrayal of Salieri in "Amadeus") as one of the cops called to the scene. We see glimpses of President Nixon in the television in the newsroom of the Washington Post, or hear snippets of him while a television is turned away from us, but there isn't a big Oliver Stone montage where we see clips of Nixon followed by bombs dropping on Cambodia, or anything like that. We just see some reporters doing their job, and it's amazingly compelling stuff.
The film's screenplay is written by William Goldman ("The Princess Bride," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"), and it's wonderful. It's tight, it holds its punches when it needs to, delivers haymakers when it needs to, and feels...well. It feels like a real conversation. I don't feel, at really any time, the presence of the script. I feel like I'm just watching a dialogue. That's a testament to a writer who understood the point of this was not to make me jump back in amazement, but to show how the amazing can spring from the mundane. Check out the scene where they are divvying up the columns/space in the newspaper. It's incredibly humdrum. It's a daily meeting in a newspaper. And we feel glad we watched it. That's writing, folks.
Likely the most famous scene in the film is a 6 minute slow take that starts with a wide shot of the newsroom, with Redford in the foreground, in focus, and a crowd gathered around the television in the back of the newsroom, also in focus (this requires a special lens, folks). Redford is chasing down leads as Nixon is chasing down the GOP nomination at the Republican Convention in 1972. By the time the film was made, we know that Nixon won, and had resigned nearly 2 years prior, so the ramifications of this moment are not a surprise, but the shot, so exquisitely and lovingly filmed, is a tremendous tool. It ends, 6 minutes later, as a tight closeup of only Redford, who has, in the process, blown a line, calling someone a name that was not correct, but was left in because it was so perfect. It's not a new technique, by any stretch of the imagination, but its inclusion here is inspired. Alan J. Pakula appeared in these reviews earlier, having directed the film "Sophie's Choice." His resume is decent, with recognizable films littering it (including producing "To Kill a Mockingbird," also on the AFI Top 100), but what you can see in his films is the ability to direct actors, or to rely on actors to tell his story. There are many things involved with directing, but the two most prominent "themes" would likely fall into two categories: technically proficient directors (stunning vistas, visual and audio artistry - more like a lot of Scorsese), and directors who focus on the tiny moments that actors bring that propel a story (more like a lot of Mike Nichols). Most directors on this list dabble quite heavily in both sides, as Pakula does here, but the overwhelming sense one gets from him is his ability to get the best performances from the actors. 
And speaking of actors, the performances in this film are spot on. You have, in this film, some old-school character actors who always turn good films into great films in Martin Balsam (3 credited appearances in the Top 100), Jason Robards, Ned Beatty (3 appearances in Top 100), Hal Holbrook, and Jack Warden (2 appearances in Top 100), along with two major stars. And that's what makes the acting so special. There is a feel, throughout the film, that the actors are listening to each other, that the conversations that are happening are spontaneous, and that the lines and their delivery follow correctly from one another. Yes, there are a few "AHA!" moments, as any good mystery needs to have, but scenes in the offices of the Washington Post are clinics on ensemble acting, and I discussed their writing above. Jason Robards won the Oscar for his performance as Ben Bradlee, and it is a great performance, but so was Balsam's, and so was Warden's. It's scriptwriting, sure, and it is likely "true," but Warden's delivery of "Woodstein!" when calling the two reporters is fantastic. How do you separate one performance from the other? The Academy felt it could, and did, but I have a tough time categorizing any of these performances. Hoffman is great, as he usually is, in his role as Carl Bernstein. Redford, ever the prettiest boy on the screen, is also dynamite as Bob Woodward. 
It is hard, the longer that I get into this list, to not stand in awe of the era between 1966 and 1980 in American Cinema. This time reinvented the medium, turned it on its ear, and for the most part, maximized its impact as an art form. Think about this. 1975 and 1976 brought us from the AFI list: "Jaws," "Nashville," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Rocky," "Taxi Driver," "Network," and this film. Then 1977 gave us "Star Wars" and "Annie Hall" as a follow-up. That's 9% of the list in 3 years. That's, well, that's incredible. No mention is made of other great films that were made in this time that didn't make the list, but I cannot fathom how so much was created in such a short period of time. Drugs, I have no doubt, helped, but so did the loosening of the restrictions that filmmakers had been under for decades. They were like kids who'd just found out that they could eat ice cream for dinner, and they made the most of the opportunities.I'm gonna wrap up. Big paragraphs on this one, without a lot of nuance. Watch this film. It's an important, oft overlooked film.
Ebert's original review is here. If you care about it. I find it funny that he gives it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars while hedging towards "unsatisfying." Odd.
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