'All the President's Men' as a woman's film

The author reads Alan J. Pakula's 1976 film as a "woman's film." The vignettes focused on women witnesses to the cover-up of the Watergate burglary reveal the pattern of seduction and abandonment common to soap opera and melodrama. The "woman's film" is a suitable genre through which to address the deep distress suffered by the nation at the discovery of presidential (patriarchal) betrayal.