Word: bernsteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...darkness of that time. The excerpts of TV appearances by Nixon, Agnew, Kleindienst, and other Humpty Dumpties about to fall are simply funny; their straight-faced optimism and flat denials sound ludicrous. The power to inspire fear and loathing has gone out of these men. So Woodward and Bernstein seem to be working against paper tigers that we know don't stand a chance. This curious impression is strengthened by the fact that the "bad" characters appear only on TV news clips. All the President's Men is something of a morality play, yet the only characters portrayed...
Save for this pale ghost, Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) have no competition in this film. Perhaps that made the director over-confident. No attempt is made to dip beneath the surface of these men or their relationship, and, perhaps, there is nothing beneath the surface. But we never really know how much these men are driven by personal ambition, how much by moral vigor, how much by pure thrill of the chase. Do they even like each other? They never discuss the wider significance of the case or their handling of it, only tactics and never strategy...
...confirmations. But in the end we are led to see these men as crusty old newsmen in the Front Page tradition, driving their cub reporters hard but backing them to the hilt in a confrontation with outsiders. Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) bears the brunt of these cliches. He puts Bernstein and Woodward under the most pressure--one of the best scenes in the movie comes when, the morning after a story linking Haldeman to the break-in has been denied by every conceivable source, he screams out "Woodstein!" across the newsroom and, for once in the film, the room becomes...
...behavior have been published? Kissinger authorized a statement deploring the authors' "indecent lack of compassion." Betty Ford argued that parts of the book "could have been omitted." One of Watergate's heroes, former Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, went further, saying of those who talked to Woodward and Bernstein: "They should be ashamed of themselves...
...read the book without feeling some sympathy for the disgraced Nixon, no matter how thoroughly his wounds were self-inflicted. When he pleads, "Henry, please don't ever tell anyone that I cried and that I was not strong," it is a hardhearted reader who is not moved. Bernstein is on solid ground in declaring: "I'd be surprised if readers do not find the book not at all unsympathetic to the former President of the United States...