The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream review – political scandal, 70s style

Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary integrates archival footage and excerpts from both older and newer films to highlight key moments of the crisis that shook the United States.

Based on his prior projects, the Irish-born, London-based writer and filmmaker Shane O’Sullivan might suffer from a persistent sense of having been born too late. This shows up as an interest in the political landscape and countercultural movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, a recurring theme in O’Sullivan’s earlier works. These include a book and film on Robert Kennedy’s assassination; the well-received documentary Children of the Revolution, which examines the female leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army; and a film about Lee Harvey Oswald.

His newest project tackles the major subject itself: Watergate—the crime, the scandal, and the cultural phenomenon. It is examined through a barrage of archival clips and snippets from feature films, skillfully woven together, with a flat-voiced narration by the talented Harry Shearer. The outcome is, naturally, nostalgic, yet it also feels current and vivid, particularly because it incorporates moments from more recent features set in, but not originating from, that era. Examples include a teenage Christina Ricci obsessed with the Watergate hearings in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, the comedic bumbling of the Watergate burglars as portrayed in the 1999 spoof Dick, or Shea Whigham’s portrayal of break-in mastermind G. Gordon Liddy from the recent TV miniseries Gaslit. These performed segments mesh well with O’Sullivan’s choice of clips from more contemporary, Watergate-related classics such as Medium Cool, All the President’s Men, and Taxi Driver.