Monday, Oct. 18, 1971
Minor Surgery
By JAY COCKS
Emile de Antonio is a specialist at cinematic acupuncture. In such documentary essays as Point of Order (about the Army-McCarthy hearings) and In the Year of the Pig (a cynical chronology of the Viet Nam War), he needled some popular historic myths and a few political reputations. Now. in Millhouse, De Antonio has employed his usual technique of matching fragments of news film with quick on-camera interviews to produce an unflattering hut funny likeness of the 37th President (whose middle name is Milhous, not Millhouse, but let that go). To be sure, De Antonio's jubilant bias sometimes plays him false. Nixon is too often seen stumbling over a foot or a phrase, and sometimes satire descends to the level of easy derision, as when scenes of Nixon's South American visit in 1958 are accompanied by the old Chiquita Banana jingle on the sound track.
But when it works, De Antonio's sense of juxtaposition can be lethal. News film of Nixon's 1968 nomination acceptance speech ("Let's win this one for Ike") is intercut with footage of Pat O'Brien in Knute Rockne advising his lachrymose squad to "win one for the Gipper"--their hospitalized teammate, who, with anachronistic irony, was portrayed by Ronald Reagan. De Antonio is also shrewd enough to know when Nixon is his own worst enemy, and he devotes a long section of Millhouse to the Checkers speech alone. Reciting his list of assets, attempting to sound humble and folksy (''Pat doesn't have a mink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat"), all the while struggling grimly to look natural, Nixon seems to emerge as the kind of bunko artist of whom W.C. Fields always ran afoul.
Millhouse touches on everything from the campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas to all six crises, and includes some unfamiliar footage like J. Edgar Hoover making Nixon an honorary FBI agent. Subtitled a "white comedy," the film is hardly likely to win praise for fighting fair. But at its best, Millhouse has the impact of a David Levine caricature.
Jay Cocks
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.