"Nixon as Hamlet, Nixon as Lear, Nixon as Blanche DuBois..." says Michael Wilmington in his Criterion liner notes. It's 1983 and Richard Nixon, late at night, is in the study of his home preparing to record his version of the events in his life. He's managed after some difficulty to connect the tape recorder. He has a tumbler of scotch at hand. As he talks he's at times playing defense attorney for Richard Nixon before an imaginary judge, at other times he's Richard Nixon explaining himself and his actions.
"I wanted to be a winner because I was a loser. That's right. I'd been a failure every night of my life and that is my secret...I was a dogcatcher...yeah...I was...I am...and a...mmm...used car salesman, too...sure, sure, fine...and a siding and a shingle man and...because I knew that today the dogcatcher is king!...and all those crooks and those shysters and those mobsters and those lobsters...I mean lobbyists...and the well fed...all the welfare bums and tramps in this country...that is your palace guard. Let 'em suck on that for a while!"
As the night goes by and as the scotch goes down, Nixon rails against almost everyone except his mother; against Eisenhower and Kissinger, against his brothers and his fate, against college slights and job interview turndowns, against east coast lawyers and slick big businessmen, against decisions he had to make to satisfy the secret deals he made with the Committee of 100 and the Bohemian Club crowd. Deep into the scotch he cries of the public humiliation he accepted to save his secret honor against the nightmare plans of the Committee and their smooth, wealthy, powerful members. "My client is guilty of one thing only," he cries to the imaginary judge, "of being Richard Milhous Nixon."
This 90-minute play, restaged to become a highly fluid and effective film by Robert Altman, is an absolute tour de force of solo acting by Philip Baker Hall. He doesn't much look or sound like Nixon, but his performance is stunning. His Nixon ranges seamlessly from resentment to suppressed rage to self pity to almost strangled inarticulateness. He can relish his victories with a cynical laugh and almost sob with the slights he knows he has received from others. The four-letter words are pungent, startling and frequent. Hall is just extraordinary.
What are we left with? I think that anyone who admires fine acting, psychology, politics and cynicism would want this film. I doubt if anyone who hates Nixon or loves Nixon would be satisfied. I found myself feeling a little uncomfortably sympathetic.
"I wanted to be a winner because I was a loser. That's right. I'd been a failure every night of my life and that is my secret...I was a dogcatcher...yeah...I was...I am...and a...mmm...used car salesman, too...sure, sure, fine...and a siding and a shingle man and...because I knew that today the dogcatcher is king!...and all those crooks and those shysters and those mobsters and those lobsters...I mean lobbyists...and the well fed...all the welfare bums and tramps in this country...that is your palace guard. Let 'em suck on that for a while!"
As the night goes by and as the scotch goes down, Nixon rails against almost everyone except his mother; against Eisenhower and Kissinger, against his brothers and his fate, against college slights and job interview turndowns, against east coast lawyers and slick big businessmen, against decisions he had to make to satisfy the secret deals he made with the Committee of 100 and the Bohemian Club crowd. Deep into the scotch he cries of the public humiliation he accepted to save his secret honor against the nightmare plans of the Committee and their smooth, wealthy, powerful members. "My client is guilty of one thing only," he cries to the imaginary judge, "of being Richard Milhous Nixon."
This 90-minute play, restaged to become a highly fluid and effective film by Robert Altman, is an absolute tour de force of solo acting by Philip Baker Hall. He doesn't much look or sound like Nixon, but his performance is stunning. His Nixon ranges seamlessly from resentment to suppressed rage to self pity to almost strangled inarticulateness. He can relish his victories with a cynical laugh and almost sob with the slights he knows he has received from others. The four-letter words are pungent, startling and frequent. Hall is just extraordinary.
What are we left with? I think that anyone who admires fine acting, psychology, politics and cynicism would want this film. I doubt if anyone who hates Nixon or loves Nixon would be satisfied. I found myself feeling a little uncomfortably sympathetic.