O Efeito Martha Mitchell

Wow -- what a surprise and a delight!

I knew the basic history of Watergate -- or rather, I thought I knew. "The Martha Mitchell Effect" reintroduced me to that past and made me question the relative simplicity of the story I'd learned previously.

With efficient storytelling that nevertheless dynamically develops its main character, the film presents a memorable story suggestive of contemporary connections without putting a fine point on them -- that is, it's faithful to its history, as a work of history should be, yet pushes the viewer to reexamine the present (again, as a work of history should!).

The restrained yet stylized use of motion and motion graphics with the archival images deserves special mention. It managed to elevate the work and give it a contemporary feel without once taking the viewer out of the era at the heart of the film. It's thoroughly historical, yet impressively fresh.

Nixon said it himself, if it hadn't been for Martha there wouldn't been a Watergate scandal.

She was not an alcoholic. She was not crazy. She simply told the truth.

This could have easily been a full length documentary. It should have been. Would have loved to have known about Martha's childhood. Also, her and her husband's relationship with their child. What was the Mitchell's life like before they went to Washington DC? How did they meet? I have so many questions that weren't addressed. This brief documentary is very well done and a perfectly adequate thumbnail sketch of this pivotal moment in history.

Depicts the political life in Washington DC during Nixon era from the perspective of a wife of a prominent political figure close to Nixon. As expected for that time she was not taken seriously when she told everyone including the press about the political maneuvers made during the Watergate by the president any the ones close to him and that includes her husband. After Nixon's resignation the press recognizes her as person who spoke the truth to power and later from the Watergate tapes we can find that Nixon feared her and tried to silence her multiple times.

What a great documentary about one of the more colorful historical figures of our time. I grew up during this era and heard of MM on the news all the time. I heard what the news was fed to report. Seeing interviews with this woman is very refreshing to see just how colorful she really was. She called it from the hip and didn't mince words. She was one of the first if not "the first" to put the Watergate blame where it belonged. The film deals directly with the Watergate incident rather than go into the historicals of MM life.

The documentary is a lot of things: fun, controversial, at times, confounding. One thing it is not: boring. This is a fast 40 minute watch. Make time for it on your schedule.

This short Netflix documentary opened my eyes to the part that Martha Mitchell may have played in the downfall of Tricky Dick himself, U. S. President Richard Nixon. She was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General and later his 1972 re-election campaign manager, John Mitchell, considered to be the man who organised the Watergate break-in. For long enough she supported Nixon, but once she made public her distaste for the Vietnam War, she was seen thereafter by the White House as a loose cannon and a potential liability to the re-election campaign.

Once Watergate hit the headlines, she sought to deflect her husband's role in the plot by saying that the buck went all the way to the top, meaning the President himself. Sadly, after Nixon's resignation, her husband left her and is actually caught on camera after receiving his prison sentence, uttering words to the effect that he still preferred that prospect over spending any more time with his then estranged wife.

Lionised in her lifetime in the press, on TV and to the American public at large as a truth-teller until Nixon's dirty-tricks saw her discredited and branded as an alcoholic mental case, she later tried to relaunch herself as a talk-show host on TV before she was sadly stricken down with what proved to be a terminal illness and died aged only 57 in 1976.

We see Nixon in one of his famous interviews with David Frost (he also interviewed Martha, but we get only a tiny glimpse of that, unfortunately) say on record 'If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate." and this after she'd died.

To attract two such quotes from both these high-profile crooks John Mitchell and of course Nixon certainly leads one to believe the floral tribute at her funeral which bore the legend "Martha was right!".

I appreciated learning about her story, even if I don't share her politics. The problem with this documentary was it was just too short and seemed to treat every major event, once she found her voice, like they were bullet points.

It's like suddenly her husband has separated from her, then she's on TV doing chat shows, then she's dying and then she's dead. She may just have been a footnote in the downfall of a disgraced president, but he certainly was well aware of her and I think the film-maker here did her a disservice in not expanding on her story more than is done here.

That said, at least her story is out there and I for one am glad I caught this flawed but interesting documentary profile of this very interesting lady.