Frost / Nixon

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Movie
German title Frost / Nixon
Original title Frost / Nixon
Country of production USA ,
UK ,
France
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 122 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Ron Howard
script Peter Morgan
production Brian Grazer ,
Tim Bevan ,
Eric Fellner ,
Ron Howard
music Hans Zimmer
camera Salvatore Totino
cut Mike Hill ,
Daniel P. Hanley
occupation

Frost / Nixon is a 2008 drama film directed by Ron Howard . It tells the story of the legendary interview that young talk show host David Frost conducted in 1977 with former US President Richard Nixon . The main roles are played by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen .

The film received five Golden Globe nominations and five Academy Award nominations in 2009 , but went empty-handed at the awards shows.

action

When the young British talk show host David Frost saw the resignation speech of President Richard Nixon , who had to resign due to the Watergate affair, during the filming of one of his shows , he immediately developed the plan to shoot a series of interviews with the former head of state. He expects high ratings from this , since around 400 million people worldwide had watched the resignation speech and Nixon was later pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford for health reasons, so that Nixon no longer has to justify himself by law for his misconduct, whereupon the US American People are actually still waiting. For three years, Nixon made no public statement on the circumstances of his resignation, but finally responded to Frost's repeated requests in 1977 .

Nixon may be unpopular after the Watergate affair, but he is a brilliant speaker and his demeanor is well considered. Nixon himself assumes that David Frost, who is inexperienced in political debates, cannot harm him much, but that he can increase his popularity through the interview. Frost is now trying to sell his interview to many American TV stations, but all too few trust David Frost to be able to elicit confessions or even apologies from the former president. So Frost decides to produce the interview at his own expense (with the help of sponsors and some wealthy friends). His friend and producer John Birt puts the two reporters Bob Zelnick and James Reston at his side as researchers. They are supposed to help him prepare for the interviews, but Frost is mostly busy in the preparation phase trying to win TV stations and sponsors for his idea or to have fun at parties. So it is hardly surprising that in the first three of four parts of the interview, the shrewd and well-armed Nixon effortlessly succeeds in unsettling the poorly prepared frost, avoiding unpleasant questions and presenting himself in a positive light. Among other things, he confuses Frost with questions about private matters seconds before the start of the recordings.

Frost's team seems to be breaking up, because the two Americans Zelnik and Reston are upset that Nixon has so far managed to present himself in a good light and thus relieve himself, and Reston doubts Frost's skills as an interviewer. With the interview, the two had hoped to coerce Nixon with the justification he was legally spared by Ford's pardon. Frost suggests that the team split up during the Easter break during filming.

Four days before the last shooting date, when his economic ruin was already looming, Frost received a call from the drunk Richard Nixon at night. The ex-president, who has always been diplomatic, now expresses himself surprisingly openly and highlights the fateful and tragic aspects of the duel between the two. They both come from small backgrounds and would have had to fight their way up through resistance against resistance. But in the end only one of them will be able to emerge victorious from these interviews: Either enable him, Nixon, a success in this duel to rehabilitate and regain influence by destroying Frost's reputation and its economic foundations, or establish a victory for Frost Put an end to his public life and open up a brilliant career for Frost. This conversation spurs Frost to spend three days preparing for the interview and sending Reston to search for previously unpublished, incriminating archive material.

Shortly before the recording this time, it is Frost who disrupts Nixon with his mention of the nightly phone call, which the ex-president cannot remember, which makes him very insecure. In the course of the interview, Frost succeeds in using the new material to elicit Nixon to say that he had done things that would have been illegal had he not been president at the time. Nixon has put himself above the law. He admits he was involved in a cover-up and betrayed the American people. He explains that his political career is now definitely over.

The final scene shows the last meeting of Nixon and Frost, who was able to achieve enormous ratings with the interviews and is now again a popular talk show host. Nixon asks for a private talk. He asks Frost whether he really enjoys "these parties" that much, and when he says yes, he congratulates him on his ability to really like people and to be liked himself. This ease was never given to him himself. He asks whether Frost also sees the irony of fate that in their youth they both chose paths in life that ran counter to their central talents - charismatic closeness to people and intellectual brilliance. Perhaps Frost would have been better suited for President and Nixon for journalist? Frost, surprised and impressed by this point of view, reluctantly agrees. Nixon's question as to whether he really called Frost one night, Frost replies in the affirmative, but replies evasively (*) when asked what the conversation was about. The two men say goodbye to each other.

(*)Just before Nixon's call, Frost's friend had just left to get something to eat. When the phone rang, he thought it was her turn and absently said "Cheeseburger!" - until the ex-president revealed himself. When he said goodbye, Frost evasively replied to Nixon's question that they had only talked about cheeseburgers on the phone.

dramaturgy

Frost / Nixon is the film adaptation of a play from 2006. In an interview, Peter Morgan , the British author of both the theater script and the film script, commented on the cinematic implementation. Some details:

  • The American director Ron Howard was chosen deliberately because he had previously worked as a purely mainstream filmmaker. This should prevent Frost / Nixon “ending up in the ghetto of obscure political films”.
  • The two main characters David Frost and Richard Nixon were cast as in the stage version with Michael Sheen and Frank Langella. For Nixon, however, Warren Beatty was also in discussion.
  • The portrayal of the interviews in the film is not authentic. For example, Morgan copied some of Nixon's statements from other interviews.
  • The unsettling "mind games" between Nixon and Frost shortly before the start of the recordings are made up.
  • According to Morgan, towards the end of his tenure, Nixon was known for making frequent calls at night under the influence of drugs and alcohol and not being able to remember them the next morning. The nightly call from Nixon to Frost shown in the film did not take place.
  • The decisive scene of the film, Nixon's extensive admission of his misconduct, is authentic, but was only placed towards the end of the film for dramaturgical reasons. In reality, this scene happened in the middle of the third interview.
  • In the stage version there are two storytellers, one from Frost's team and one from Nixon's team. In the film version, these two narrators were replaced by appearances by several people from both teams. These appearances were inserted between the actual scenes of the game and are kept in the style of the testimony of contemporary witnesses in documentaries who speak directly into the camera. However, the characters are also embodied here by their actors and have not aged compared to the scenes in the game, as would be expected in a documentary made decades later.

Reviews

“Director Ron Howard has picked a great television moment that provides the perfect material for the cinema. Optics, dialogues, dramaturgy, acting: everything is just right here [...] "

- Carsten Baumgardt

“You don't have to be particularly politically educated to be able to follow the thrilling exchange of blows, you can even watch the film like a western: two men fight against each other. And they don't stop until one of them is down. Conclusion: Powerful political and psychological duel, which, despite its chamber play-like staging, captivates until the last second and comes up with Oscar-worthy performance "

- Cinema

“Frost / Nixon” shines as a media-staged drama of two people who argue for the truth in front of the camera, but in reality are fighting for their own future. The film shows that in politics it is not only what a politician says that decides, but how he looks when it does. It demonstrates the power of the image over the word, the charisma over the staging, the body language over the language [...] "

- Jean-Martin Büttner

Awards

Golden Globes 2009

Nominated for:

Satellite Awards

  • Best Screenplay - Peter Morgan

Also nominated for:

  • Best film - drama
  • Best Director - Ron Howard
  • Best Actor - Drama - Frank Langella
  • Best cut

British Academy Film Awards 2009

Nominated for:

Oscar 2009

Nominated in the categories:

The film was given the rating of particularly valuable by the Wiesbaden film evaluation office .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Frost / Nixon . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2008 (PDF; test number: 116 341 K).
  2. ↑ Interview with screenwriter Peter Morgan. (No longer available online.) In: sueddeutsche.de. Archived from the original on February 8, 2009 ; Retrieved March 4, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de
  3. ↑ Hamlet without Hamlet . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1977 ( online - contemporary SPIEGEL report on the Frost / Nixon interviews).
  4. ↑ filmstarts.de
  5. ↑ cinema.de
  6. ↑ culture section of the Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger in February 11, 2009