GREAT CINEMA ADAPTATIONS: ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

Peter Josyph via Zoom

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's 1974 classic of investigative reporting at the Washington Post took its shape partly because of Robert Redford's interest in adapting it into a film, and it was under his influence that they included themselves in the story of the Watergate scandals that led to Richard Nixon's resignation. The 1976 film from an Oscar-winning screenplay by William Goldman, directed by Alan Pakula (producer of To Kill A Mockingbird), is a rare cinema tribute to dogged, creative research, a journalistic achievement that Times editor Gene Roberts called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time"; it also led the Washington Post to a Pulitzer Prize. Starring Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Hal Holbrook, Ned Beatty, Jane Alexander, Lindsay Crouse, F. Murray Abraham, and Jason Robards in an Oscar-winning portrayal of Post editor Ben Bradlee, the film won 4 of its 8 Oscar nominations and was called, by Charles Champlin, "an engrossing mystery movie, with atmosphere, suspense, surprise, conflict, danger, secret messages, clandestine meetings, heroes, villains and a cast of leading and supporting characters that might have emerged from an unlikely collaboration of, let us say, Raymond Chandler and Gore Vidal." He might have added humor, for Woodward and Bernstein were often in absurdly comic relationships with the people they were investigating. Our first session looks at the novelistic style and personal nature of this book that defined a new standard for investigative journalism. Our second session examines the many reasons for the film's enduring popularity from both aesthetic and political perspectives.

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