50 years later, All the President's Men represents a truly bygone era

The Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman film represents a significant piece of history — ancient history

All the President’s Men is one of the best political thrillers ever made, but as the movie turns 50, it's become completely irrelevant.

On April 9, 1976, All the President’s Men arrived in theaters. Based on the book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the film depicts their breaking of the Watergate scandal, as well as the ensuing coverage which led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in August 1974. Coming out just a few years after the events it depicts, All the President’s Men was a spectacularly timely film when it debuted, and 50 years later it remains a masterwork of directing, acting, and writing.

Yet in the era of President Donald Trump, the messages of All the President’s Men are neither applicable nor relevant. Instead, they represent a bygone chapter in American history no more relatable to current events than films depicting the Civil War or our revolution.

All the President’s Men begins at the Watergate Hotel, where five men are arrested for burglarizing the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), a relatively inexperienced reporter for The Washington Post, is sent to the local courthouse to cover the case for what seems like a routine assignment. Spotting a high profile attorney at the hearing, and learning some surprising details about the burglars' history with the CIA, Woodward suspects more is going on.

From there, Woodward teams up with his colleague Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman). As the two dig deeper, they uncover connections between the burglars and the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which is working on getting Richard Nixon a second term. The more Woodward and Bernstein dig, the higher the connections go, up to and including people working directly in the White House for Nixon himself.

The period from the Watergate break-in until Nixon’s resignation spanned more than two years, but director Alan J. Pakula only depicts up until Nixon is reelected, or just the first few months of The Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate. No doubt this decision was made to tell a tight, fast-moving story, which Pakula does incredibly well. The entire film depicts the unglamorous gruntwork of reporting, yet the rapid pacing conveys a sense of urgency that escalates with every new piece of information. As the evidence increasingly points to Nixon’s White House, that urgency gives way to a sense of fear conveyed by Woodward, Bernstein, their editors and all their potential sources. There’s also just something about the clacking of the typewriters in the offices of The Washington Post that makes this film move.

The acting is also spectacular, with Redford and Hoffman pulling off a chemistry of two co-workers who don’t quite know each other at the beginning of the story but become true partners in the trenches by the end. Jack Warden is also a joy to watch as their no-nonsense editor Harry M. Rosenfeld, as is Jason Robards as executive editor Ben Bradlee, who gains a growing respect for Woodward and Bernstein throughout. Most memorable though might be Hal Holbrook as Woodward’s mysterious source, named only “Deep Throat,” who feeds the reporter information in a shadowy parking garage and eventually warns Woodward that he and Bernstein’s lives are in danger.

William Goldman’s screenplay is also remarkable for how real-feeling and understated it is. Throughout the movie, people constantly interrupt and talk over each other in a way that immerses you in the busy world of 1970s newspaper reporting. Only occasionally do the words slow down, and it's always when there’s something really important being communicated, like when Deep Throat tell Woodward to “Follow the money.”

But while those words remain resonant, they are no longer relevant.

Since returning to office, President Trump and his family has profited over $4 billion in foreign deals and cryptocurrency ventures. He’s also received absurd gifts in his official duties as president, like the $400 million jet from Qatar. For Trump, following the money is all too easy, yet he’s been allowed to get away with it and continues to enrich himself.

The man who uttered that “Follow the money” line, while a shadowy, unnamed figure when the movie came out, was later revealed to be Mark Felt, who was deputy director of the FBI while he was feeding information to Woodward. During the two Trump presidencies, we’ve had more than a dozen different Deep Throats, many of which have even gone on the record to recount Trump’s misdeeds and warn the public about who he is. Many of them hold even more prominent positions than Felt did, like the actual head of the FBI, James Comey, who told the public how Trump tried to obstruct an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. And there’s also the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who warned Americans that Trump is a "fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever.” Yet 77 million people voted for him anyway.

Even trying to compare the crimes of Nixon and Trump is inadequate. The historical consensus is that Nixon quite possibly didn’t even know about the break-in of the DNC beforehand. He did, however, aid in the cover-up and that was enough to end his presidency. By comparison, Trump has led the way with his corrupt acts, from trying to blackmail the President of Ukraine into helping him win election against Joe Biden, to phone calls where he tried to bully Georgia election officials into changing the results of the 2020 election.

Those efforts having failed, Trump instead chose to spread lies about the election, which led directly to him coordinating the insurrection on the Capitol Building that took place on Jan. 6, 2021. In 1974, Nixon chose to resign the presidency because he was told that only about 15 Republicans would support him through impeachment. Today, Trump rarely sees any major opposition from any Republicans in the house or senate, despite the fact that he led an attack on the very building they gather in.

Nixon’s time was one of courage, while we are living in an age of cowardice.

Throughout the first Trump administration, and already in his second, all sorts of people — including Woodward and Bernstein themselves — have attempted to draw parallels between Nixon and Trump, and between the Watergate scandal and Trump’s ever-growing list of scandals. With the 50th anniversary of this film, I fully expect more of those comparisons to be made.

But there is simply no comparison.

With Donald Trump, the lies are much bigger, the crimes are more horrible, and the evidence of his misdeeds is far better than anything that came from Deep Throat. Yet none of it has mattered. His grip on power remains firm. The Washington Post, meanwhile, has been gutted by a close Trump ally.

So instead of looking at All the President’s Men as some relevant depiction of history relatable to today's events, we should regard it in a more distant way. When we watch a great piece of media depicting America in the 18th or 19th centuries, like Steven Spielberg's Lincoln or HBO’s John Adams series, we see an ancient America, far removed from our own. The same is now true of All the President’s Men, as the lessons of the 20th century are equally outdated.