World Famous Comics: All the President's Men (Two-Disc Special Edition)
All the President's Men (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook Directed By: Alan J. Pakula Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 2 Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 21, 2006 Running Time: 138 minutes Theatrical Release Date: April 09, 1976
Product Description: In the Watergate Building lights go on and four burglars are caught in the act. That night triggered revelations that drive a U.S. President from office. Washington reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) grabbed the story and stayed with it through doubts denials and discouragement. All the President's Men is their story. Directed by Alan J. Pakula and based on the Woodward/Bernstein book the film won four 1976 Academy Awards (Best Supporting Actor/Jason Robards Adaptation Screenplay/William Goldman Art Direction and Sound). It also explores a working newspaper where the mission is to get the story and get it right.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569734012 Manufacturer No: 73401
Amazon.com essential video: It helps to have one of history's greatest scoops as your factual inspiration, but journalism thrillers just don't get any better than All the President's Men. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are perfectly matched as (respectively) Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose investigation into the Watergate scandal set the stage for President Richard Nixon's eventual resignation. Their bestselling exposé was brilliantly adapted by screenwriter William Goldman, and director Alan Pakula crafted the film into one of the most intelligent and involving of the 1970s paranoid thrillers. Featuring Jason Robards in his Oscar-winning role as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, All the President's Men is the film against which all other journalism movies must be measured. --Jeff Shannon
Solid if dated Alan J. Pakula's 1976 hit film All The President's Men is as good an example of a filmmaker as craftsman as there is. Pakula was never a great director/auteur, a man with a `vision.' Rather, he was a journeyman filmmaker who tried to best shape whatever scripts came his way. The film is a good one, but it falls shy of greatness because it is a film that is all surface level. Yes, it digs deeply into the Watergate Conspiracy that brought down President Richard Nixon, but it never allows us to get inside its two lead protagonists, the then-unknown and now universally famed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford, who also produced the film, with Walter Coblenz) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), who walked into the biggest journalistic story of the last fifty years. Yes, they were good, solid young reporters, but neither their writing skills nor drive was what separated them from dozens of other reporters. It was just dumb luck, or so the film portrays, for never do we get a glimpse of what makes either man tick. Yes, we get tics and obsessions, sloppiness and manic cigarette and coffee consumption, as well as posturing, but little more, and this is likely the reason that neither star was nominated for an Academy Award, although the film, itself, garnered eight of them. It won for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards, as Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay, by William Goldman. It also got nominations for nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Jane Alexander, as a key informant), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Motion Picture. The downfall of Richard Nixon is so well known that to detail it, in this film's context is superfluous. This is why, however, the decision to focus on the relationship of the reporters was wise. It's the result of that focus that ultimately fails, even if the film is still suspenseful and fast moving enough to provide enough gloss to cover that narrative deficiency. Yes, we get an extraordinary glimpse into the nuts and bolts of how stories were dug at and reported in the old days, including how the Post's rivalry with the New York Times affected reporting and business decisions, before blogging and celebrity news displaced real journalism, yet there is something elegiac about the film. The book was based upon the 1974 book that the two reporters wrote, of the same title....The real stars of the film are not Redford and Hoffman, but its music editor- David Shire, film editor- Robert L. Wolfe, but most especially its cinematographer- the great Gordon Willis. The film is loaded with virtuoso work by all three, such as Willis's above the heads zoom shot out from the rotunda of the Library of Congress where Woodward and Bernstein pore over documents; other zoom outs from the men's car to shots of Washington D.C., as the men's voices banter in the voiceover background; bird's eye exterior shots of the Watergate break-in, where the light inside seems warm and orange, while from outside it is blue, dark, and threatening; the almost Stygian feel that the garage where Woodward meets Deep Throat gets, to the point that even the slightest noise augurs evil; and split screen shots that achieve the effect through naturalistic elements in the frame, rather than being imposed from without. The sound, especially in dialogue, where it overlaps, is a great example of virtuoso reality in an age when such was far more difficult to do than now. Then there are the smaller things, such as the differing looks that the two heroes of the film have versus their older, more seasoned colleagues, the almost automat feel of the recreated Washington Post newsroom, in its harsh geometric arrangements under fluorescent lighting, and other great moments, too numerous to list. Yet, despite its flaws, this film has to be considered important, and a success, as well as unfortunately relevant in light of the many current abuses of power under President George W. Bush, whose attempt at starting an Imperial Presidency after 9/11, with the consent of the majority of the American people and Congress, makes Nixon's power grab, in the face of rabid hatred for the man, seem almost quaint, if not desperate and pathetic. All The President's Men is not a great work of art, but it is a good and interesting one, as well as a cornucopia of bravura filmic techniques that artisans of the cinema should find invaluable for decades to come, almost as much as journalists and historians will find the film valuable for their own reasons. Unfortunately, the film viewer is the odd man left out in this equation. Yes, the film entertains, but as a tale it leaves one hungrier than when one started it. Oddly, this very same sort of feeling is what likely compelled its protagonists to their calling. Would that the viewer only got as just a desserts as they did.
Buy This Even If You Have An Older Version. This DVD is worth buying for the voice-over commentary by Robert Redford alone. You will not be disappointed.
Memories A good movie about the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. I bought this movie to show to my classroom... but their generation was easily bored because of the lack of show-effects...
...or Watergate: How two reporters brought down a President "All the President's Men" is a superb account of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's tenacious investigation into the Watergate break-in that would eventually lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Director Alan J. Pakula uses the spareness that he brought to "The Parallax View" two years earlier to create a sense of paranoia and evoke the awesome machine that Woodward and Berstein were up against.
Brilliant use is made of sound and voices and the acting is superb even in the smaller parts. This is an exciting film even when you know the result beforehand.
All the President's Men For those who forgot about the Watergate era, and those who were too young or unborn, this is a recommended history lesson.
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