It is a very interesting juxtaposition to watch a movie about a scandal so huge it forced a President to resign hours before watching a Presidential debate.
"All the President's Men" had a stellar ensemble cast. Robert Redford played the clean-cut, by-the-book Woodward while Dustin Hoffman played the chain-smoking Bernstein (and I must confess to seeing shadows of Tootsie in his performance). Jason Robards was Ben Bradlee, who is still alive. Hal Holbrook played Deep Throat, whom we now know was Mark Felt, Associate Director of the FBI. Meredith Baxter, you know, Alex P. Keaton's Mom on Family Ties, played Mrs. Sloan. Stephen Collins, the dad from Seventh Heaven, played Sloan. How young they all were back in 1976.
Of course, one could not help but notice how far cinematography and basic technology has come since then. There was one scene where Redford was on a pay phone and a car was driving by in the background, with all the occupants staring at him, like the celebrity he was. Woodstein, as Bradlee called the two, were doing research in the Library of Congress and the camera panned out, giving us the view from the ceiling looking down on them; the camera wiggled and moved! One scene showed Woodward searching through phonebook after phonebook to find a phone number. Now, we can just google it! The garage scenes where Woodward had his conversations with Deep Throat were highly suspenseful; not sure our modern film makers could have done any better. Seeing how a newsroom operated in the 70s with the reports using typewriters made me thankful for computers! Even the credit card receipts in the 70s are so different from now - they were handwritten for goodness sake!
The most fascinating thing, for me, was the scenes of Washington DC. As a city it hasn't changed much, yet, so much there has changed. Driving by the White House is not quite so easy now. Buildings have incredible security that was not even considered in 1976. It also seemed like there were more trees in DC in the 70s.
Unfortunately, corruption is still alive and well in DC. Where are the Bernsteins and Woodwards of today to uncover it?
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