USA
Shown in 1971
CREDITS
- dir
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Emile de Antonio
- prod
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Emile de Antonio
- cam
-
Ed Emshwiller, Mike Gray
- editor
-
Mary Larson
- source
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New Yorker Films
-
COMMENTS
Emile de Antonio in person.
OTHER
A political satire, a political document, a political survey, in short—an indefinable masterwork of social history, utilizing the vast arena of American government as a satirical target. Emile de Antonio, who has rapidly become the Lincoln Steffens of the American cinema, has created a thoroughly engrossing panorama of incidents, gleaned from newsreel and television footage, describing the evolution and rise of Richard M. Nixon from childhood to the presidency. In the past, Mr. De Antonio’s documentaries were tinged with indignation and retrospective outrage—Point of Order, Rush to Judgment and In the Year of the Pig were all concerned with American indifference to demagoguery, political assassination and the Vietnam war, respectively. Now, in Milhouse: A White Comedy, he has submitted the film “in the tradition of the Marx Brothers,” and it is a sign of the times that merciless television and film cameras can make great comedians out of the most saturnine politicians. The tone of the film is immediately made clear with a picturization of the President’s wax effigy being installed in Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, suddenly juxtaposed to the man’s present speeches. From 1962 to the present, appearance after appearance shows the President’s essential humanity, the sort that makes it imperative for one to dissemble, ponder, smile, frown and joust for power in the Washington jungle, at the proper time. The progression of events in which Mr. Nixon found himself embroiled in history (notably the Hiss-Chamber affair) are always fascinating to watch; we see the man-of-politics moving determinedly toward a goal, touching the lives of great men whose careers were short-lived, who appear, at this point, to have been only figures in a landscape of one man’s White House ambitions. The laughter springs from the audience’s perspective of recent history: The inept phrase or outburst of temperament can form the basis for comedy in just a matter of months. Millhouse: A White Comedy is a sardonic reminiscence of the tragicomedy of political success, a lengthy journey marched with odd remembrances—a pumpkinful of espionage or a dog named Checkers.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #1
The Festival has screened many debuts, both short- and feature-length, by some of cinema’s most influential artists including Juan Antonio Bardem, Jane Campion, Roman Polanski, Melvin Van Peebles and Lina Wertmüller.
