Secret Honor (1984)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Robert Altman

Writers:

Donald Freed (play) &
Arnold M. Stone (play) ...

Release Date:

29 January 1986 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Anyone can BE the President.

Plot:

A fictionalized former President Richard M. Nixon offers a solitary, stream-of-consciousness reflection on his life and political career - and the "true" reasons for the Watergate scandal and his resignation.

Plot Keywords:

Watergate Scandal | President | Watergate | One Man Show | Real Time

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Philip Baker Hall

...

Richard Nixon

Also Known As:

Lords of Treason
Secret Honor: A Political Myth
Secret Honor: The Last Testament of Richard M. Nixon

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:PG | UK:15

Filming Locations:

University of Michigan central campus, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Company:

Sandcastle 5 Productions

Trivia:

Filmed while 'Robert Altman' was a professor at the University of Michigan. The crew consisted of mostly students of the University who were studying film.

Quotes:

Richard Nixon: You, ladies and gentlemen of the American jury, shall look at the face that is under the mask, that is -
[stumbles]
Richard Nixon: - that is under the mask!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Directors: The Films of Robert Altman (#2.9)" (2001)

a great piece of one-man theater that gets tight, sometimes Bergman-esquire film-making

Richard Nixon, a man known for many things, amongst which trying to reach out to the "silent majority" of America, while plunging the country further into war and getting into one of the big cover-ups of the nation, is given a character here. It's not necessarily the man altogether, but like Oliver Stone's Nixon, it's an interpretation given a blood-life by way of Donald Freed and Arnold Stone's script (which is maybe the 2nd best thing about the film), Robert Altman's peering, sometimes paranoid, but tight compositions, and Philip Baker Hall. This actor is one of the unsung masters of character acting, even when he sometimes can only just be 'himself' in the roles. Here his inhabitance, more than portrayal, of Nixon captures (as Antony Hopkins did in his own way) the soul of the man dead-on.

It's a one-man film, so that Hall's work here has to be better than top-notch, it has to be engrossing. Nixon as a political being, family man, lawyer, and practically professional liar, are given shape here by his near-movie length confession into a tape recorder. This could be a tricky thing for Altman and Hall to pull off, but for pretty much the entire film they do. One thing I loved was how sometimes Altman would cut-away from his actor and get shots on Nixon on the security monitors installed in his office/room (where he spend the duration of the film in). There were also some very evocative, powerful shots of Hall as Nixon reflected against the window, this being even closer to Nixon- a ghost or some other entity- than Hall.

But in the end, even for all that Altman could do (which is really just to let the camera roll and maybe give Hall a word or two when needed), it is really Hall who has all the credit going for him here. What works best about what he does here is the time he takes, how his acting is made almost like music- he'll speed up, get frustrated/angry/cynical in his own sometimes scrambled recollections of the past, then slow down in self-shame asking to erase parts of the tape (to whomever may be listening, if at all). Here is a man whom in real life was a smart man, but also paranoid to a fault, with as many personal demons as detractors, and who could always be counted on to be pushing forth a lie to the American public. Hall gives him life here, in this "fictional" account as a tortured, flawed, drunken leftover of days gone by. That sometimes it becomes even more moving than expected, and revelatory, makes it all the more clear why it still remains Hall's landmark in his career (among others, like in PT Anderson's films), and that for Altman it's dark, brooding, and like a Bergman film, does NOT make it's doomed subject into a one-dimensional being.