Film Reviews
1173
leather flying jackets, are authentic, as are the general background scenes. All characters, men
and women, wear hats, and almost all them, military and civilian, smoke, as did more than 50
percent of the U.S. population in the 1940s. More important, the cadets are accurately depicted
as well-educated people who wanted to become pilots more than they felt any need to prove that
blacks could fly planes.
Films like The Tuskegee Airmen would gain immeasurably from a historical adviser, who
could keep producers historically honest. The film does not explore any new territory. Its primary
message seems to be that racism and racists are bad. All of its black characters are positive, but
their desire to be pilots is not probed in any depth.
For all its omissions, fictive scenes, and too-shiny autos, The Tuskegee Airmen may give
something of the "feel" of that time. It could be useful to illustrate for students a time in U.S.
history that they may find incredible: when certain unoffending groups could be singled out for
official segregation, exclusion, or internment solely on the basis of their race, and when the
majority of Americans, when they thought about it at all, believed that these were reasonableenough actions. But this film is no substitute for a sober presentation of the historical facts, which
on their own are inspiring enough.
u.s.
Stanley Sandler
Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg
Nixon. Produced by Dan Halsted, Eric Hamburg,
Oliver Stone, and Clayton Townsend; directed by
Oliver Stone. Screenplay by Stephen J. Rivele, Oliver
Hamburg, Oliver Stone, and Clayton Townsend. 1995;
color; 190 minutes. Distributor: Buena Vista Pictures.
t is not enough to point out the factual errors in Oliver Stone's latest historical travesty, Nixon.
This time, he has exceeded his previously demonstrated contempt for history and produced
not just a movie made up of visual psychobabble imposed on a counterfactual base but a
pornographic representation of an American president-perhaps a first.
I say this as one who believed that Richard Nixon should have been impeached for
obstructing justice during the Watergate cover-up and as one who was (and is) very critical of his
foreign policy. By calling this movie pornographic, I mean that it is like the pornographic
representations of rape, which objectify and commodify women and silence audiences by leaving
no room for discussion of facts or debate. In this movie, Stone has "raped" Nixon and seduced
and silenced his audience. He has once again imposed his paranoid, conspiracy-driven mentality
on us, especially on those too young to remember Watergate or Nixon, let alone the
assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy (which take up half an hour of this film).
If the American system ("the beast," to use Stone's terminology) is so bad, instilling more
cynicism and paranoia in the public is no way to address the problem. Stone could have used the
millions that went into this movie to start a third party or finance an independent candidate. But
the political problems facing this country are only exacerbated by implicating a drunken,
dysfunctional, guilt-ridden Nixon in John F. Kennedy's assassination, and probably in Martin
Luther King's, Robert Kennedy's, and even the attempt on George Wallace. This is easier to do
than to portray Nixon as the quintessential American politician, representing both the best and
worst of modern presidents.
It is not "just a movie," as Stone and other directors who pervert history often say when
confronted with the facts by historians. It is the representational, pornographic rape not only of
Nixon but of the presidency itself, which is all that is left of the American political system.
The major actors, Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen, are not at fault. As Dick and Pat
("Buddy"), they give wonderful performances, even if these have nothing to do with the reality
I
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER
1996
1174
Film Reviews
of the president and first lady's life together. Neither was a lush. Pat Nixon never stood up to her
husband or his aides on political matters, let alone threaten divorce over them. Nixon did not
neglect his children, as the film implies, nor was he emotionally twisted because his mother ("the
saint") had neglected him for his two brothers, who died of tuberculosis.
Yes, the acting is brilliant and the cinematography is impressive, with its collages and
montages of black-and-white and color flashbacks (although they make for a confusing
chronology). The problem is the end result. Nixon, for all his flaws, deserved better, and so do
moviegoers. Many reviewers have commented on the "surprising sympathetic portrayal" of Nixon
in this film-a sympathy that escaped me but that I believe is the result of Hopkins's convincing
performance of a psychologically bedeviled man. It has nothing to do with Stone's presumed
sympathy for Nixon. The movie blatantly distorts Nixon's rather boring persona: a man neither
obsessed by blood fantasies over his two brothers' deaths nor hospitalized from thrombophlebitis
while president. Nixon simply imposes psychological blood fantasies on its main character for
gratuitous effect.
The audience is also victimized by the inclusion of a composite Tex-Mex character played by
Larry Hagman (invoking "JR" a la "Dallas") and an assortment of devious anti-Castro Cubans
capable of conspiracies beyond those participated in by Lyndon Johnson and the CIA in Stone's
movie about the Kennedy assassination, JFK (1991). And the audience does not need a 45-minute
erroneous version of Watergate based on John Dean's and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's
undocumented books of over twenty years ago.
Good solid scholarship exists, not only on Watergate but on all of Nixon's personal and
political life-contrary to the implication of the disclaimer flashed at the beginning of the movie
and scrolled by almost too fast to be read. For one thing, transcripts for the sixty-three hours of
White House tapes released to date clearly indicate that Nixon did not use the specific profanities
that allowed Stone to obtain the coveted "R" rating for his representation of the 37th president.
Nixon was a mild-mannered, boring swearer (and moderate drinker), but, hey, who cares?
Certainly not Stone, who cannot even quote the famous "smoking gun" tape correctly.
The arrogant distortion of the historical record in Stone's Nixon is exceeded only by the film's
inattention to the interplay between history and artistic license. There is no interplay or tension
between history and artistic license in this movie. There is only one silencing view presented: that
of a rape of U.S. history in front of a mesmerized audience in order to impose once again Oliver
Stone's personal political beliefs on moviegoers world-wide. Despite the good performances, the
cinematically synchronized classical music to portray the mundane, and the seductive visuals, this
movie about Nixon does not represent "entertainment" or just another inaccurate historical
account. It should not be seen unless you already enjoy pornography; then, as one Supreme Court
justice said, you will know it when you see it.
Joan Hoff
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Center for the Study of the Presidency
OCTOBER
1996