Journal of Popular Film and Television ISSN: 0195-6051 (Print) 1930-6458 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjpf20 All the President's Men as a Woman's Film Elizabeth Kraft To cite this article: Elizabeth Kraft (2008) All the President's Men as a Woman's Film, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 36:1, 30-37, DOI: 10.3200/JPFT.36.1.30-37 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JPFT.36.1.30-37 Published online: 07 Aug 2010. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 78 View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=vjpf20 Download by: [Cankaya Universitesi] Date: 07 November 2016, At: 07:12 All the President’s Men as a Woman’s Film Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) on the steps of the Library of Congress. By Elizabeth Kraft Abstract: The author reads Alan J. lan J. Pakula’s 1976 film All the remained fascinated to this day by the Pakula’s 1976 film as a “woman’s President’s Men fits loosely into way the reporters, Carl Bernstein and film.” The vignettes focused on A several generic categories, firmly Bob Woodward, pieced together a case, women witnesses to the cover-up of into none. It is most often referred to as episodically and daily. the Watergate burglary reveal the pat- a detective film or a conspiracy thriller, The film partakes of other genres as tern of seduction and abandonment and certainly the whodunit narrative well. The “buddy film,” for example, common to soap opera and melodra- pattern is catalyzed by the quiet, dark provides another structuring device. ma. The “woman’s film” is a suitable scene of the break-in and developed Woodward and Bernstein develop from genre through which to address the throughout the film by scenes reveal- rivals into collaborators in a challenge deep distress suffered by the nation at ing periodic discoveries adding up to to power on two levels—the hierarchy the discovery of presidential (patriar- a revelation of guilt in the end. The of influence in national politics and the chal) betrayal. narrative tension of the film is driven hierarchy of influence at the Washing- by our willingness to forget what we ton Post. We think of them as buddies, a Keywords: Stanley Cavell, Molly know and participate in the mystery, mismatched pair but a workable team— Haskell, Emmanuel Levinas, melodra- the accumulation of evidence, and the such as Butch Cassidy and the Sun- ma, Alan J. Pakula, Washington Post, unmasking of villainy. We wanted to dance Kid or Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo. Watergate, “woman’s film” know in 1972 and 1973 whether or not These associations would have occurred President Richard Nixon would be held to audiences in 1976, as Robert Redford accountable for the Watergate break- and Dustin Hoffman were linked in the Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications in; we were fascinated then and have imaginations of moviegoers of that time. 30 All the President’s Men as a Woman’s Film 31 Each had enjoyed individual success as All the President’s and there is very little attempt to appeal a half of another buddy team, but, per- to women in either regular films or night- haps more significantly, the two films in Men is basically a time television. (29) which they earned buddy renown were “woman’s film,” a This argument can be supported by produced in the same year, 1969, and exceptions that prove the rule. In 1970, both were nominated for Best Picture. suitable genre in which the “weepie” Love Story was a box Midnight Cowboy won the award, but office hit and a critical success, garnering Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to address the deep seven Academy Award nominations and won a place in the hearts of the Ameri- distress suffered by the making Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw can moviegoing public. Robert Redford genuine Hollywood superstars. Signifi- was the closest thing the 1970s had to a nation at the discovery cantly, however, from 1964 to 1969, matinee idol, and Dustin Hoffman was of presidential Ryan O’Neal enjoyed a measure of fame the decade’s artiste. Between them, they as a soap opera star in television’s first defined American male stardom, and (patriarchal) betrayal. prime-time soap opera, Peyton Place, in their “buddiness” was inherent in their which he starred as Rodney Harrington, crime melodrama or the Western” (21). opposite looks, roles, and performance opposite Mia Farrow’s Allison MacKen- The “woman’s film,” also known as the styles. zie and Barbara Parkins’s Betty Ander- “weepie,” offered the woman viewer Another genre alluded to early in the son. Farrow and Parkins also starred the chance to purge frustration at her lot film is the “common man” genre or the in “woman’s films”—Rosemary’s Baby in life through vicarious identification “David and Goliath” narrative that Frank (1968), a soap opera/horror hybrid, with a victimized, suffering female. As Capra perfected in Mr. Smith Goes to and Valley of the Dolls (1967), a pure Haskell notes, the genre, like any genre, Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. “weepie,” respectively. Haskell’s general has highs and lows. At the lowest level, These allusions occur early in All the sense that by the 1970s the “woman’s the “woman’s film” functions as “soap President’s Men, and they provide more film” was the province of television opera” or “soft-core emotional porn for emotional than structural guidance. We serials—or, more specifically, of soap the frustrated housewife” (21).1 At the root for the “hungry” young journal- opera television serial actors and audi- highest level (as in Max Ophuls’s Let- ists, but we do not expect—nor do we ences—seems fitting. ter from an Unknown Woman or King get—a confrontation between the pow- From mid-May to early August of Vidor’s Stella Dallas, for example), the erless and the powerful. In a film about 1973, soap operas (as well as other day- genre exhibits an acute sensitivity to media, everything, including confronta- time programming, that is, game shows women’s concerns, dignity, and even tion, is mediated by the newspaper and and cartoons) were preempted by the power. The best “woman’s films” are the television. These are journalists, not Senate Watergate hearings. The high centered on “the woman who begins as senators or businessmen; they write, drama (and high stakes) represented by victim of discriminatory circumstances and their war is a war of words. the congressional inquiry found a ready and rises, through pain, obsession, or Without denying the importance of audience in soap opera enthusiasts. One defiance, to become mistress of her each of these genres to the overall study found that 85 percent of American fate” (23). Further, Haskell argues, “her effect of All the President’s Men, I households tuned in to some portion of ascent is given stature and conviction suggest another way of reading this each day’s proceedings, aired on a rotat- not through a discreet contempt for the film—one that accounts more fully for ing basis on the three networks, ABC, female sensibility, but through an all-out all its dimensions, especially for its CBS, and NBC.2 Demographics and belief in it, through the faith, expressed emotional impact and cultural signifi- domestic habits of the 1970s guaran- in directorial sympathy and style, that cance. In the following pages, I will teed that the primary viewing audience the swirling river of a woman’s emo- argue that All the President’s Men is for the hearings was composed largely tions is as important as anything on basically a “woman’s film,” a suitable of women who did not work outside earth” (23). genre in which to address the deep the home and young people—college Haskell ends her essay on the “wom- distress suffered by the nation at the students, especially. All the President’s an’s film” by noting its demise: discovery of presidential (patriarchal) Men addresses both of those audiences, betrayal. As Molly Haskell notes in her Eventually women-oriented films, like appealing, as do all thrillers and detec- 1974 essay on “the woman’s film,” the the women-oriented plays from which tive stories, to the young person’s desire many of them were adapted, disappeared term itself is used in genre studies “as a from the cultural scene. The derisive to master knowledge and unseat power, term of critical opprobrium . [which] attitude of the eastern critical establish- but invoking as well the emotional dis- carries the implication that women, and ment won the day and drove them out of tress caused by betrayal, lies, cheating, therefore women’s emotional problems, business. But at one time the ‘matinee and arrogant disregard for the rights and are of minor significance” (20). But, she audience’ had considerable influence on feelings of others—the distress, in other movie production and on the popularity continues, “in the thirties and forties . of certain stars. This influence has waned words, typically examined and catharti- the ‘woman’s film’ . was as regular to the point that the only films being cally exorcized in soap operas or in the an item in studio production as the made for women are the afternoon soaps, melodramatic “woman’s film.” 32 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television It is hard to imagine any viewer actu- nevertheless, the implication about devi- beneath the surface of male posturing.