Secret Honor (1984)

Director: Robert Altman
Starring: Philip Baker Hall

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Secret Honor has one of the great screen performances in cinematic history. Philip Baker Hall plays Richard Nixon in this one-man movie of Nixon babbling insanely into a tape recorder at once defending himself of Watergate charges to some imagined judge and at once reminiscing on tangents about his colossel failures and how he is the American dream.

It's a credit to Altman, too, to adapt the original play to film with such grace and fluidity. The camera floats through the room following Hall's manic-depressive performance. Altman injects the play with another element that both underlines Nixon character's paranoia and gives the film its main visual motif--the security monitors. In fact, when we see Hall through the monitors his resemblance to Nixon is absolutely uncanny.

P.T. Anderson fans may know that it was this film that so impressed Anderson as a young man that when he got a chance to work with Hall when Anderson was a production assistant, Anderson promised Hall a part in his first movie. Philip Baker Hall has had a part in every P.T. Anderson film except Punch-Drunk Love. Much like Quentin Taratino's re-discovery of John Travolta, Anderson introduced Philip Baker Hall to a new generation of film viewers. For those who want to see what so impressed Anderson and for those who want to see one of the greatest film performances, take a gander at Secret Honor.

February 11
apartment TV, late night

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