Secret Honor [Criterion Collection]

Director: Robert Altman

Overview

"After resigning in disgrace, Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) sits at a desk in his study late at night, dictating his memoirs. Taking one drink, then another, he rants about Eisenhower, Castro, Khruschchev, Kissinger, the Kennedys, and any number of ot

Product Details

Release Date:	10/19/2004
UPC:	0037429197929
Original Release:	1984
Source:	CRITERION
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:30:00
Sales rank:	16,858

Special Features

New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound; Audio commentaries with director Robert Altman and co-writer Donald Freed; New 22-minute video interview with actor Philip Baker Hall; 81 minutes of archival-film excerpts from the political career of President Richard M. Nixon; English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired; Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition; Plus: an essay by film critic Michael Wilmington

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Philip Baker Hall

Actor

Technical Credits

Robert Altman	Producer
Scott Bushnell	Executive Producer

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. Opening Credits
2. Testing 1, 2, 3, Uh, 4
3. The Matter of the Pardon
4. The Kennedy Brothers
5. Goddamn TB
6. I See the Face of a Child
7. My Wife Does Not Wear a Mink Coat
8. Something Happened to My Client
9. The Committee of 100
10. The Blueprint of My Life
11. I Could've Beaten Kennedy
12. I Am the American Dream
13. I Used to Love Being President
14. Watch Out for the Liberals
15. The American Nightmare
16. Your Good Dog, Richard
17. What Are You Looking At, Kissinger?
18. The Hiss Case
19. The Reds, the Reds, the Reds
20. Only Nixon Could Dump Nixon
21. The China Plan
22. I Can Feel Mother's Eyes
23. The CREEP Conspiracy
24. He Chose Secret Honor
25. John Dean Did Me a Favor
26. I Sold My Soul at Bohemian Grove
27. Guilty of One Thing Only
28. Fuck 'Em! Fuck 'Em! Fuck 'Em!

Menu

Side #1 --
Play the Movie
Chapters
Chapters: Color Bars
Commentaries
Director Robert Altman
On
Off
Index
Freed, Hall, Harders, and Altman
Illusion of Nixon
From Stage to Screen
The Monitors
Nixon and His Family
"As He Gets Drunker"
Nixon's Awareness of Himself
The Tapes
Harold Pinter
Presidents and Preachers
Reagan and Nixon
No Conclusions
White Phone, Red Phone
"As if There Were an Intruder"
War With the Press
"I Did Not Interfere"
According to Stone and Freed
The Willy Loman Tragedy
Political Content, Financial License
No Personal Agenda
The Best Thing Freed Did
Nixon and Television
Truth and Conspiracies
Nixon's Secret Honor
Democracy at Its Height
"I Got a Letter From Nixon"
Hall's Performance
The Real Power of the Film
Color Bars
Co-Writer Donald Freed
On
Off
Index
Audacity, Commitment, and Bravery
Era of Paranoia
Another Trial Hanging Over Him
Contradictions
Nixon's First Job as a Shill
"Keeps Taking Detours"
Tricky Dick Nixon
The Psychoanalysis of Nixon
Bohemian Grove
"To Win, to Win, to Win"
Nixon's Secret Police
A Deeply American Story
"Oh, to Be President"
"As Nixon Gets Drunker"
Slips of the Tongue
The "Good Dog, Richard" Letter
Kissinger and Nixon
Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers
New Deal Democrats
Voice of the Silent Majority
Nixon's Cold War America
To Make a Portrait of Nixon
The Tortured Tail of Vietnam
The White House Horrors
Mythology of Deep Throat
"Nixon Said to Halderman..."
"There Comes a Moment of Truth"
Altman's Genius
Color Bars
Philip Baker Hall
Play
Index
New York Stage Actor in L.A.
The Original Play
Robert Altman Steps In
Collaboration and Choreography
"It Put Me on the Map in Film"
President Richard M. Nixon
Play
Index
Play All
"Checkers Speech"
1968 Biographical Campaign Film
Q&A Session at Editors' Convention
Response to Subpoena of Tapes
Resignation Address to the Nation
Farewell to the White House Staff

Editorial Reviews

Tellingly subtitled A Political Myth, Robert Altman's film version of Philip Baker Hall's one-man show Secret Honor (1984) intriguingly imagines a disgraced Richard Nixon as he spends an evening raging against his dying political light. Smoothly framing Hall's actions through the two media that were the bane of Nixon's career (unflattering TV and even more unflattering tape recordings), Secret Honor mixes fact and fiction in a rambling yet compelling monologue suggesting Nixon was the victim of nefarious corporate greed as well as the paranoid, over-ambitious architect of his own downfall. Hall is no dead ringer for Tricky Dick, but he adroitly captures the distinctive hunch and infamous profanity. Alternately blustering, sobbing, and sputtering in frustration, Hall manages to evoke a whiff of sympathy for the man while pulling no punches about Nixon's crimes. Filmed at the University of Michigan for a class Altman was conducting, Secret Honor may have been one of Altman's cluster of 1980s theatrical adaptations, but its sharp interrogation of the Nixon mystique also makes it an apt companion to his 1970s dissections of American political and media mythology.