All the President’s Men - Two-Disc Special Edition
Category: Blu-ray's and DVD's
“What did the president know and when did he know it?” That phrase was one of the most memorable to come out of the Senate Watergate hearings. After the Watergate hearings, the House took up Impeachment proceedings. So, how did Richard Nixon go from a landslide victory in 1972 to the first president to resign from office? That’s the story of All the President’s Men. The movie is based on the investigative journalism of rookie reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the story of Watergate and followed it through to the end.
The 40th Anniversary of the Watergate episode is the right time to relive the happenings and inform a new generation of Americans what the country went through in the 1970s, the dedication of the journalists, and the Imperial Presidency. This special edition Blu-ray includes a second disc: All the President’s Men Revisited, a new documentary that is just as important to view and informative as the movie itself. Narrated by Robert Redford, who starred in the movie as Bob Woodward, this new documentary looks back at the actual people who brought the story to the public as well as those who were part of the story.
The documentary reunited Redford with his real-life counterpart, Woodward, along with Carl Bernstein and Ben Bradlee, the Executive Editor of The Washington Post at the time of Watergate. Also talking about the story and the movie are Dustin Hoffman, who played the chain-smoking Carl Bernstein, and members of the Nixon White House and others who played their own parts in the Watergate episode.
In this fascinating documentary, Carl Bernstein acknowledges the whole event “was worse than we thought.” And, what they originally uncovered was just a tiny tip of the iceberg, which turned out to be gigantic.
The break-in was just the clue that led Woodward and Bernstein to the entire scheme and cover-up, which ultimately stopped in the Oval Office. The movie is not merely an entertaining story about what happened, but it is a detective story, and what a detective story it is!
Nixon’s law and order platform crumbled under the pressure of his need for power. His abuse of power was a symptom of his personality. Later, after he was out of office, Nixon said, “When a president does it, it’s not illegal.” Nixon’s flawed sense of thought is still talked about today. And, in many circles he is likened to the current president, who, many people feel, seems to be building his own Imperial Presidency. As they allude to in the documentary, the lessons learned from Watergate didn’t last long and the same mistakes will be made again.
The great takeaway from this story is that the Democrats and Republicans worked together to “put country ahead of party” and politics. The Republicans were front and center when it came to calling for the president’s resignation, which is something that is difficult to imagine today when the bond of party politics is so unbreakable in Washington.
The importance of “Deep Throat”, aka Mark Felt, the #2 man in the FBI at the time, is another amazing sub-story of the entire Watergate episode. The pieces that came together to solve the puzzle of Watergate make for an amazing story, which is All the President’s Men. With the original film, in high definition, and the bonuses, which add to the viewer’s understanding of the times, the people, and the events, this Special Edition is a “must have.”
All the President’s Men is rated PG.
About the Author
Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment business for 20 years. She also writes about technology and has been a travel writer for the past 12 years. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as Internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet: The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.
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