"Secret Honor" is an actor's wet dream.

This screen adaptation of a one-man play stars Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon on the dark night that follows his resignation from the office of President of the United States. The film makes clear from the outset that it is not a representation of facts but rather a fictional exploration of the thoughts and feelings that may have been torturing Nixon at the time. Hall has the screen to himself and gives a fierce, if rather one-note, performance. The material isn't very deep and doesn't give Hall a lot of room to explore, but I suppose it succeeds on its own modest terms.

Robert Altman made this film at the apex of his disenfranchisement from the mainstream Hollywood system. He filmed it at the University of Michigan with the assistance of Michigan students, and the tiny budget and minimal resources show. It's not remotely cinematic, though Altman makes a solid effort to make it so. Though the action is confined to Nixon's private office, Altman frequently pans his camera over to a bank of security cameras that Nixon has trained on himself, so that much of the time we're watching an image of Hall on a T.V. monitor rather than Hall himself. The message is clear -- Nixon, and by extension any politician, is constantly performing, even in his most private moments. Once one takes the oath of the presidency, he can't ever stop being the president. How good a job would any one of us do under similar circumstances, and how harshly do we have the right to judge our leaders?

Admittedly, much of my lack of enjoyment of "Secret Honor" is my own fault. It made me realize how little I actually know about Nixon's presidency, which was over in the years just before I was born, and I wasn't able to understand many of the film's references. As is often the case, my knowledge of the more distant past is greater than events that have occurred within my lifetime.

Grade: B

A fictionalized former President Richard M. Nixon offers a solitary, stream-of-consciousness reflection on his life and political career - and the "true" reasons for the Watergate scandal and his resignation.

This comes down to one thing: an examination of the acting skills of Philip Baker Hall. Since the direction is so limited, it really cannot say anything good or bad about Robert Altman (who had already made his name by this point).

Hall's Nixon is something of a madman. He fluctuates through every range of emotion within 90 minutes, at times flipping between anger and suicidal tendencies. What a wild ride. Of course, the film is clearly marked as fiction... so we should not assume this person was in any way related to the real Nixon.

A bitter and disgraced Richard Nixon (superbly played with alarming intensity and ferocity by Philip Baker Hall) decides one night while pacing around his private study to open up and reflect on his troubled life and thwarted political career before eventually revealing the reasons behind the reasons for the infamous Watergate scandal.

Director Robert Altman makes ingenious use of a bank of television monitors and cinematographer Pierre Mignot's restless prowling camera in order to inject plenty of thrilling cinematic panache into the stage play-based material. The bold and incisive script by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone not only astutely captures the tortured soul and heavy heart of Richard Nixon, but also thoroughly covers both Nixon's rough impoverished background and rocky times in office as well as postulates several radical conspiracy theories that are downright startling in their audacious implications. However, it's veteran character actor Hall's bracing and bravura portrayal of Nixon which encompasses a broad array of emotions ranging from anger to pride to regret to ultimately fierce defiance concerning his miserable place in American history that in turn makes this film so resonant and provocative: Alternately profane and pitiable, paranoid and reflective, ashamed and remorseless, Hall's characterization of Nixon as a complex bundle of contradictions accomplishes the astounding feat of making the viewer in the long run feel more than a little sorry for Nixon and his wretched plight. An absolute powerhouse.