This past weekend I watched the film All The Presidents Men (1976). This film depicts the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigation into the Watergate scandal. All The Presidents Men starts off with the discovery of the break in at the Watergate complex and goes all the way to President Nixon taking the Oath of Office. The movie concludes with the future headlines in the continuation of the Watergate scandal and ends with  Nixon to resign, Gerald Ford to become 38th President at noon today.

This film in my opinion did a great job at showing what Woodward and Bernstein did to uncover the truth behind Watergate. From using contacts in Washington to asking round-about questions for confirmation or even a clue as to whats going on, the film did a great job depicting what they went through. One of my personal favorite moments was after Woodward and Bernstein received the list of employees for the Committee to reelect the president. Going from house to house to ask the same questions over and over again only to get rejected in the same way again and again. Another part of the film I liked was how it emphasized everyone’s unwillingness to talk. Everyone would always say “They’ll see your car.” or alluded to the fact that someone got to them and told them to be quiet about the issue. From knowing very little about Watergate this was really surprising to me that nobody wanted to speak up about what was happening.

Another aspect of this film I liked was how everything was a mystery. Without prior knowledge each scene was a new piece of the overall puzzle. Who were the burglars? What were they doing? Why were there relationships with Washington? These questions were all present at the beginning of the film and were slowly answered throughout the rest of the film. While these were answered throughout the film, new ones kept arising. Such as Why was no one willing to talk? Who was in control of it all? Who was Deepthroat? While only one of these questions was answered out right, the film continued to pile on more and more questions. I really liked this as it kept you involved with the movie and wanting to know how would Bernstein and Woodward get the answer and what would the answer be.

One thing I did not like about the film was how it ended in the middle of the Watergate scandal. I would have liked to have seen the movie continue through the subpoena and the tapes and then to Nixon’s resignation. To me the film could have been helped by adding in these moments of the Watergate Scandal instead of just showing a montage of headlines of them at the end. While I know that this would have made a 2+ hour movie even longer, I think that it would have helped explain the Watergate scandal and its resolution even more. However, since this movie did come out in 1976 I can understand why there was no need for the last scenes since knowledge of Watergate was more widespread.

While All The Presidents Men was a good movie, I don’t think I’ll be watching it a second time. The only way I could see myself watching it a second time was if I watched it with someone who had a ton on knowledge of Watergate so they could fill in some holes of the movie, especially all the headlines at the end. Also since I watched it online and through my laptop speakers the sound quality wasn’t very good and I had to replay certain parts (especially any scene with Deepthroat in it) to understand the dialogue. Also I think the movie progressed really slowly and assumed that viewers had previous knowledge of Watergate. Despite this though I did like the movie and learned a lot about Watergate and am glad to have watched it.