Parky At the Pictures (18/9/2026)

(Reviews of The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream; and The Cycle of Love)

THE WATERGATE CAPER: RICHARD NIXON AND THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.

Irish director Shane O'Sullivan is no stranger to American history. Having examined the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in RFK Must Die (2007), he turned to the killer of his brother in Oswald (2013), which explored the conspiracies surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald. He's equally at home in the 1970s, however, with Children of the Revolution (2010) focussing on Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, who respectively belonged to the Red Army Faction and the Japanese Red Army. Now, drawing on research undertaken for his 2018 book, Dirty Tricks, O'Sullivan considers a defining moment in modern American history in The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream.

Opening on 8 August 1974, as Walter Winchell introduces the broadcast in which President Richard Milhouse Nixon will resign, the documentary flashes back six years to Hunter S. Thompson (who despised Nixon) interviewing him on his campaign bus at the start of his bid for the presidency in 1968. We see Robert Kennedy's final speech at the Ambassador Hotel and witness the chaos of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, which formed the backdrop of Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969). Armed with the `sock it to `em' catchphrase he had picked up during a guest appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in (after telling an interviewer that he wasn't the gimmick type), Nixon attacked Lyndon Baines Johnson's policies in Vietnam and seems likely to outpace opponent Hubert Humphrey.

Election night is prismed through Hal Ashby's Shampoo (1975) before Peter Watkins's Punishment Park (1971) is used to reflect on the use of force on citizens following the shooting of students on the campus of Kent State in Ohio. The sense of a police state had been conveyed by Michelangelo Antonioni in Zabriskie Point (1970), which contradicted Nixon's insistence that had always been in favour of protest.

As is shown in Steven Spielberg's The Post (2017)., the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg disclosed that Nixon had expanded a war he had promised to end. The president's fury is heard in a taped phone call, while his efforts to prevent future leaks with his own in-house intelligence network are recalled in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995). Leading `The Plumbers' was E. Howard Hunt and Egil Krogh is shown recalling his role in the break in at the offices of Ellsburg's psychiatrist, Dr Lewis Fielding, in the hope of finding information with which to smear him. The operation was lead by lawyer G. Gordon Liddy and we see Nixon denounce it in a speech. Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes (1971) traded on prevailing notions of spying and bugging and Liddy's boasts about what he could achieve are mocked in Shea Whigham's mini-series, The Gist (2021). Attorney General John Mitchell and assistant Jeb Stuart Magruder testify to a Senate committee about Liddy's ideas, which draw laughter from those in attendance. But they still sanctioned him to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, DC.

While Warren Beatty vouches for candidate George McGovern on a chat show, we learn how the shooting of Nixon rival George Wallace coincided with Paul Schrader writing Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), which is set during a presidential campaign and has Travis Bickle stalk the candidate in the way Arthur Bremer did Wallace. Another film connection to the time sees Michael Winner have an office next door to the DNC while shooting Scorpio (1973), which was the first picture to shoot on CIA premises. Watergate burglar Frank Sturges met Burt Lancaster on the day of the break-in and shook his hand. He also went to see Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men (1976) after getting out of prison and commented on the similarities to what he had been through.

Back in 1972, Scorpio co-star Alain Delon shared an elevator with Howard Hunt before the break-in, on 17 June which is shown from All the President's Men interspersed with hearing footage from the Metropolitan Police officers attending the scene and lookout Alfred C. Baldwin III, who co-operated with the inquiry. Interestingly O'Sullivan misses the chance to refer to the film on TV that distracted Baldwin from his job, Bert I. Gordon's Attack of the Puppet People (1958).

As US news bulletins carried stories on Bob McCord and his four Cuban accomplices being caught trying to plant bugging devices, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward received information that two of those detained had the name of Howard Hunt in their address books.

On the instructions of Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean tossed incriminating documents into the Potomac River, while Magruder destroyed papers relating to Liddy's Gemstone plan. Richard Helms, however, refused to allow Nixon's team to use the CIA to cover up the break-in, despite the fact that McCord was a long-serving agent. He repeated in Senate testimony that the CIA was not involved with Watergate.

Michael Ritchie's The Candidate (1972) was released around the time the Democrats confirmed McGovern and Robert Redford became interested in making a Watergate film while promoting it. On 29 August, Nixon made a statement claiming that Dean had conducted a full internal investigation of White House staff - but he hadn't and sat tight on the fact that the president had lied while abhorring the idea of any cover-up into Watergate.

Scenes of Gene Hackman in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) accompany clips in which it's admitted that the 17 June break-in was to put right a bungled bid that had bugged the wrong phones so that the intel coming out was of no consequence. Investigators were baffled by the mistakes that were made and the fact that cop Paul Leeper was on the scene two hours after his shift had ended. One suspects the police had been tipped off and that Hunt was responsible, but Watergate had no impact on the election result, although Ehrlichman was asked about it in the first interview after the result was called. What law enforcement official were sure of was that they were well ahead of Woodward and Carl Bernstein in unearthing clues.

In the spring of 1973, McCord sang and Magruder and Mitchell changed their stories. As a result, Nixon addressed the nation to inform them that Ehrichman, chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, and Dean had all resigned. He concluded a nervy performance with the phrase, `There can be no whitewash at the White House.' But the story wouldn't go away, especially after Dean turned evidence in the Ellsberg case and he was freed.

Everything focussed on what Nixon knew and when and ways to ascertaining this became clear when Alexander Butterfield disclosed the presence of recording devices in the Oval Office. When Nixon refused to hand them over - prompting a scene in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997) - and then closed the special office investigating Watergate, speculation whirled that he had something to hide. Under pressure, he surrendered the tapes, but spoke about earning every cent in his bank account so that the American people knew that their president wasn't a crook.

Amidst rumours of impeachment proceedings, Nixon gave his State of the Union address on 30 January 1974. But within days, news broke that 18 minutes was missing from one of the tapes and few believed secretary Rose Mary Woods when she said she had done it accidentally while pausing transcription to answer the phone. Nixon defended her, but a subpoena was issued for the remaining recordings and news reports concurred that there were enough votes to impeach.

The day after informing the public of his decision to go, Nixon handed over to Gerald Ford and pundits concluded that he had been brought down by his need to have enemies, a deep-seated sense of bitterness, and his hatred of the press.

Ford pardoned Nixon on 8 September and he told Dick Cavett that he did so to speed up the healing process, as a trial would be a year away. Films like Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) and Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) summed up the paranoia in post-Watergate America. But Harry Shearer's narration makes it clear that the inclusion of a clip from Hal Ashby's Being There (1979) is aimed at Donald Trump and his Maga constituency, as a fool who believes everything he sees on television becomes a close adviser to the president. Yet, nothing would have happened had $2 an hour security guard Frank Wills not noticed that someone had replaced the tape he had removed from one of the doors of the DNC office. He got to play himself in All the President's Men, but he was long-term unemployed when TV cameras caught up with him seven years later. O'Sullivan opts not to reveal that he lived in poverty before his death from a brain tumour at the age of 52 in September 2000.

This is about the only thing O'Sullivan doesn't touch on in an adroitly thought out and well-constructed documentary that makes splendid use of both archive footage and clips from pertinent Hollywood features. Serving as his own editor, O'Sullivan uses barbed juxtaposition to underline his points, leaving Harry Shearer's droll narration to make sure we all know he's gone to all this trouble to spike the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who makes Nixon look like a choirboy by contrast.

Little emphasis is placed on Nixon's conduct of domestic policy or his escalation of the war by invading Cambodia. But his political legacy has been so scuffed by his downfall and disgrace that achievment feels like an irrelevance. Although focussing on the 48th President, O'Sullivan ensures that the `yes men' and enablers in his entourage are also held up for opprobrium and ridicule. It's almost as if he's waiting for someone to paraphrase the line uttered by so many Scooby-Doo villains: `And I'd have gotten away with it without that meddling Frank Wills.'

Things have changed over the last five decades and not always for the better. Nixon always denied that he was a crook and, unlike some since, he doesn't seem to have lined his pockets or indulged in shameless nepotism. He was, however, cowardly, envious, thin-skinned, and vengeful. Despite having shaken the loser tag in 1968, he was haunted by the spectre of defeat and this prompted him to over-estimate the threat posed by George McGovern in 1972. Obviously, his biggest mistake was getting caught. But his worse decision lay in the selection of the inner circle members who lacked the ruthlessness to organise a simple espionage mission and keep it secret. Nixon was always his own worst enemy. But his confidantes were clueless and that's where the difference lies with today - at least until someone decides that two terms isn't enough.

THE CYCLE OF LOVE.

Once a professional snowboarder, British documentarist Orlando von Einsiedel knows all about going the extra yard. He has twice won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short - for Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul (2010) and The White Helmets (2016) - while Virunga (2014), his study of mountain gorillas in Congo, was nominated for Best Documentary. Having made Evelyn (2018) about his late 22 year-old brother, Von Einsiedel also knows about putting personal feeling on screen, as he does to touching effect in The Cycle of Love.

An astrologer told the parents of Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia that his future wife would come from far away. She would be a Taurus and musical. Moreover, she would own a jungle. As a Dalit, PK had grown up an outcast. So, when he went to Delhi in 1972 to make his way as an artist, he was overwhelmed when (after three years of struggle and ostracisation) Swedish tourist Ann-Charlotte von Schedvin treated him without prejudice. Although she was travelling in a van with friends, she spent the next few days sightseeing with PK and even visited his home village.

Inspired by his horoscope, PK decided to buy a secondhand woman's bicycle and follow the hippie trail through Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran to get to Europe. He only had $80 to his name, as well as his art materials and some dried fruit. But he set off with utter confidence in his destiny and his journey is recreated through improvised interactions featuring Chirag Lobo as PK and Mina Dale as Lotta.

The real Lotta describes her conservative childhood in the small town of Borås and explains how finding a photograph of a stone wheel in India during a trip to London made her long for adventure. She admits she found PK handsome and charming during her portrait sitting and had no hesitation in spending time with him, as she had no idea he was `Harijan' or `Untouchable' according to the Indian caste system.

On his journey, PK sold sketches to survive and we see him discussing his experience of exclusion with four Dalit men living on the streets. Lotta recalls her distress at the pain that PK had to endure because he was considered inferior and this feeling was reinforced back in February 1977, when he was denied entry to Pakistan. Fortunately, a kindly sitter in Amritsar paid for PK to fly to Kabul and he was able to continue when his bike arrived by bus a few days later. As his visa was only for a fortnight, he had to cycle hard to make the border. However, he was deflated by a letter from Lotta wondering whether it was worth the risk of riding all this way through dangerous terrain. Reliant on the kindness of strangers, PK (who was often cold and hungry) felt dutybound to stay with an Austrian tourist named Linea, who had lost her teeth in a car crash. While sitting by her bedside in Kabul, however, his visa expired and he had to wait several weeks for a new application to be processed.

Suffering through the Dasht-e Kavir desert, PK felt as desperate as he had done following the death of his mother (when he had contemplated suicide). But a Cuban woman encouraged him to keep going and he was rescued from exhaustion on the shores of the Caspian Sea by three female medical students with a picnic. Despite not having heard from Lotta in many months, PK felt renewed and pressed on to Turkey in his bid to reunite with her.

In Istanbul, he found a letter from Linea waiting for him with a train ticket to Vienna to thank him for his kindness to her. He was singled out by German policemen on a train near Passau and threatened with deportation, but managed to convince them to let him go to his beloved. This certainty that Lotta is the one is contrasted with her recollection of PK taking her to a Sun temple near his home village of Odisha, which just happened to contain the stone wheel that she had on her wall in London. It was then she realised they were meant to be together and PK recalls their first kiss with delightful enthusiasm.

On 28 May 1977, 123 days after leaving Delhi, PK arrives in Halmstad and he cycles on with the realisation that self-love had enabled him to prevail, as if you don't love yourself, others can't love you and you can't give love. Grateful to all those who had helped him along the way, he completed the cycle of love and PK and Lotta join Lobo and Dale in recreating the hug they shared on her doorstep. Closing captions (accompanied by family photos and home movies) explain how they had two children and now live in Sweden but regularly return to India to campaign for Dalit equality.

It's a fitting end to an epic feel-good story that is told on an intimate scale by Von Einsiedel and his actors improvising with people they meet along the route that PK had followed half a century earlier. There are plenty of asides denouncing the caste system, while the journey is clearly supposed both to remind audiences of the hardships that migrants face in trying to reach Europe today and to urge them to show a little compassion towards their fellow humans.

The socio-political messages aren't allowed to overwhelm the central theme of love conquering all, however, which is reinforced with each utterance the affable PK makes. His bits to camera exude the charisma that prompted so many strangers to help him. But Lotta also has a quietly subversive dignity, as she reflects on the chances she took to reach India in the first place and her natural instinct to accept PK for who he was.

Von Einsiedel first became aware of the story, when PK and Lotta's children, Emilie and Karl, had given him a copy of Swedish journalist Per J. Andersson's book, The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled From India to Europe For Love. His fondness for the couple is evident in the space he affords them to speak for themselves. But he also rather romanticises their story through the casting of the photogenic Chirag Lobo and Mina Dale and some of the postcard vistas captured by cinematographer, Franklin Dow. Patrick Jonsson's score is also on the sentimental side, but this seems fair enough, given the nature of the content. But the biggest factor in realising Von Einsiedel's bold conceit is the editing of Katie Bryer, who also cut another account of a remarkable journey against the odds, Alex Holmes's Maiden (2019), which recreated yachtswoman Tracy Edwards's achievement during the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989. Piecing together atmospheric travelogue snippets with the talking heads and the reconstruction of PK's travails, Bryer ensures the film combines the scope and intimacy that makes PK and Lotta's love story so captivating and inspirational.