All the President's Men (1976)
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
During the 1972 elections, two reporters' investigation sheds light on the controversial Watergate scandal that compels President Nixon to resign from his post.
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4 films that influenced All the President's Men
What critics say influenced All the President's Men
Look at the detective movies from this period (Chinatown, Night Moves, The Parallax View, Electra Glide in Blue, The Conversation, Klute), of which All the President's Men is one: Nobody knows anything and, after further investigation, they know even less.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Presumed Innocent), the film never shows any bad guys or showdowns, and yet it sustains a palpable sense of menace.
Alan J. Pakula ("The Parallax View," "Klute," "Sophie's Choice," "The Pelican Brief") directed and Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford star as the two fledgling reporters who broke the case.
He’s had some fine movies: “The Sterile Cuckoo” and “Klute.”
Later to precipitate a string of paranoia-charged 70s thrillers (" The Parallax View " and "All the President's Men") from the director, "Klute" still perhaps stands as Pakula's finest moment.
A movie resolutely of its moment that still surges with third-rail electricity, Alan J. Pakula's 1971 neo-noir Klute, about a New York City prostitute being stalked by a sociopath, is heralded as the first installment of the director's "paranoia trilogy," followed by The Parallax View (1974) and All the President's Men (1976); all three films were lensed by the great Gordon Willis, master of mood and shadow.
Look at the detective movies from this period (Chinatown, Night Moves, The Parallax View, Electra Glide in Blue, The Conversation, Klute), of which All the President's Men is one: Nobody knows anything and, after further investigation, they know even less.
The westerns were dirty, the sci-fi was dirty, the horror was really dirty, and the dramas, from The French Connection to The Godfather to Fat City to Cockfighter, were about people in miserable professions using the tools of their trade to discover, too late, that they weren't the masters of their destiny.
Alan J. Pakula ("The Parallax View," "Klute," "Sophie's Choice," "The Pelican Brief") directed and Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford star as the two fledgling reporters who broke the case.
Look at the detective movies from this period (Chinatown, Night Moves, The Parallax View, Electra Glide in Blue, The Conversation, Klute), of which All the President's Men is one: Nobody knows anything and, after further investigation, they know even less.
This ultimately also connects with Pakula’s common thematic fascination with political corruption and paranoia, which was just as potently mined in The Parallax View and later on in Presumed Innocent and The Pelican Brief, the latter arguably being the best of all the John Grisham adaptations.
That, right there, is the power of a truly great film, and All the President's Men is not just a truly great film, it's one of the very best American political thrillers of the 1970s, absolutely the best decade for political thrillers that ever was or ever shall be - The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor are the only films from the genre I would dare think to stack against it, and neither one of those had the handicap (benefit?) of being based on very recent true events.