The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream review – political scandal, 70s style

Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary weaves archive clips and snippets from films old and new to draw out the highlights of the crisis that rocked the US

Judging by his past work, the Irish-born, London-based writer and film-maker Shane O’Sullivan may have a chronic case of born-too-late nostalgia. It manifests as a fascination with the politics and counterculture of the late 1960s and 70s, and that’s clearly a theme in O’Sullivan’s previous works, which include: a book and film about the assassination of Robert Kennedy; the acclaimed feature doc Children of the Revolution about the female leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army; and a film about Lee Harvey Oswald.

His latest takes aim at the big kahuna itself: Watergate – the crime, the scandal and the cultural phenomenon. It is explored through a hailstorm of archive clips and snippets of feature films, all nimbly stitched together, with a deadpan voiceover by the great Harry Shearer. The result is, of course, nostalgic, but also feels fresh and immediate, especially thanks to the use of moments from more recent features about, but not from, the period, including a Watergate-hearings-obsessed teenage Christina Ricci in The Ice Storm from 1997, the comic ineptitude of the Watergate burglars as represented in 1999 spoof Dick, or Shea Whigham’s skewering of break-in mastermind G Gordon Liddy from recent TV miniseries Gaslit. These performed moments all play nicely with O’Sullivan’s selection of clips from more contemporaneous, Watergate-adjacent classics such as Medium Cool, All the President’s Men and Taxi Driver.

Alongside this, the archive material is neatly marshalled and excerpted in such a way as to explain to a bright gen Alpha kid roughly what this Watergate thing was all about, although O’Sullivan chooses not to get to bogged down in the detail and mostly surveys the highlights. Of particular note are some less well-known clips of “Tricky Dicky” Nixon himself, coming across as surprisingly amusing, joking around with his aides before the cameras go live. Even when we see him lying through his teeth, one can’t help thinking he seems like Abraham Lincoln compared with the current occupant of the White House. The times, they have a-changed, and not for the better.

• The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream is in UK cinemas from 18 September and on digital platforms in the US from 29 September