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Abstract

Oliver Stone's NIXON. The rise and fall of a political gangster

New forms of historiography, in writing or on screen, are still principally judged according to their historical accuracy. Let's consider Oliver Stone's feature films about the past for instance. In the debate on nixon both the critics and the filmmaker mainly focused on the factual veracity of the movie. Seeking a good synthesis of fact and fiction - crucial to the historical relevance of the film - appears to have been Stone's most important preoccupation during the making of the movie. A closer analysis of nixon however, reveals that especially through the interlacing of historical facts and symbolic references to classical tragedy, film history, and the Bible that the film does indeed pronounce a historical judgment on the 37th president of the United States.

Keywords: media history, film, Nixon