The Martha Mitchell Effect

This isn't so much a documentary as a collection of archive interviews with the wife of the Attorney Genbaral at the time of the Watergate scandal all knitted together. She was a flamboyant and opinionated woman whom the Nixon administration initially saw as an asset, but when her husband John became implicated in the cover-up and then she, herself, became the victim of some serious slur campaigns because she refused to toe the party line, her name became mud and her sanity questioned. She still managed to secure the interest of the press and the media, though, and that's what constitutes the substance of this forty minute feature. It's an interesting watch that shines quite a light on the role of women in the higher echelons of a male dominated government and of the expectations placed on their behaviour, and some of her quotes do illustrate quite clearly that she wasn't a lady to be messed with - but with little by way of analysis (retrospective or contemporaneous) it's really not much more than an attempt to celebrate her courageousness rather than critically analyse it. It's certainly worth a look as it provides another piece in an intriguing jigsaw puzzle, but it's a little bit unrevealing.