Nixon | MOVIE MUSIC UK

NIXON – John Williams

December 4, 2025 1 comment

THROWBACK THIRTY

I am not a crook! — Richard Nixon, November 17, 1973

I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow — Richard Nixon, August 8, 1974

Director Oliver Stone’s film Nixon is an epic biographical drama tracing the life of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Structured as a psychological portrait, the film moves back and forth in time, depicting a number of major turning points: his humble California upbringing in the 1930s and 40s, his early political rise in the 1950s and his stint as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower, his triumphant election victory in 1968, the pressures of the Vietnam War, and above all the widening shadow of the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up which led to his eventual downfall and his resignation as president in 1974. Stone presents Nixon as both deeply ambitious but profoundly insecure, a man shaped by personal trauma and driven by a desire for power and recognition that eventually turned to paranoia, criminality, and disgrace. Watergate, for those who don’t know, refers to an event where a group of Nixon operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington DC in order to illegally plant surveillance equipment, ostensibly to obtain political intelligence on the Democratic Party prior to the 1972 election. Read more…