I, like many others this week, decided to rewatch All the President's Men in honor of Robert Redford's passing.
It's a pretty perfect film on multiple levels and still feels remarkably modern, right from the minimalist opening titles. Not to mention its tight script and incredible performances from Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, the real-life reporters who helped publicize President Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal.
Gordon Willis served as the film's director of photography, and you can spot his trademarks quickly if you have any familiarity with his style. One of the most influential cinematographers of all time, he never shied away from deep, dark shadows, which are prominent in this film—appropriate for a story about secrets and subterfuge. And then of course there's that iconic Library of Congress pull back, shot from a hundred feet up.
But throughout the film, there are very unique shots using a split diopter.
Newer cinephiles often find these moments both stunning and confusing. You'll find plenty of Reddit posts wondering how the heck he achieved them.
All the President's MenCredit: Warner Bros.
What Is a Split Diopter Shot?
A split diopter is essentially a half-lens attachment that screws onto your camera's existing lens. Imagine taking a magnifying glass, cutting it down the middle, and mounting one half over your lens.
That's the basic concept, though the actual optical engineering is more sophisticated.
The split diopter allows one part of your frame to focus on objects that are close to the camera, while the other half focuses on subjects much further away. You obviously can't do this with a regular lens, which renders different distances in different focus, giving an image depth of field.
The result is a shot where both the foreground and background remain sharp, while the middle ground often falls into soft focus. It's like having two different focal planes operating simultaneously in the same frame.
All the President's MenCredit: Warner Bros.
Split Diopter Shots in All the President's Men
Willis used this technique masterfully in All the President's Men to create visual relationships between characters and emphasize the investigative nature of the story.
You'll notice these shots particularly during scenes in the newsroom, where Willis might have a character's face in focus in the foreground while keeping background action equally sharp.
The technique creates an unsettling, almost voyeuristic quality that perfectly matches the film's paranoid atmosphere.
You see this early in the film as Woodward begins digging into the conspiracy. I had forgotten the film's first split diopter, in fact, and it really is masterful.
The thing is, split diopter shots often feel more like style over substance. They often aren't motivated by anything other than a DP's desire to show off or play with the tool, and they're usually incorporated so obviously that they're a distraction. A lot of people find them hokey. Usually, you'll have a face in extreme close-up on one side, with someone deeper in the background, and it's almost a jumpscare. It just seems like an invasion of space.
While these shots are definitely noticeable in All the President's Men, they are often so well blended that a layperson probably wouldn't see that anything technical is being pulled off in front of them.
They're motivated, too. The newsroom in the film is as much a character in the film as the key reporters. It's alive, with reporters moving around constantly. Thematically, the shots also fit—the world keeps moving, the wheels of politics keep turning, Nixon proceeds as normal until the very end of the film, all while Woodward and Bernstein work.
There's one particular shot in the film that's quite famous now, known as the Dahlberg scene. It starts with a split diopter shot that slowly pushes in and never cuts.
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If the shot is distracting here, it's on purpose. It's the same distraction Woodward would experience in the noisy newsroom as reporters watch TV behind him, chatter, break up.
But as the focus slowly grows on the character and his major breakthrough, the background falls away, and we lose the split focus.
In 2019, Willis wrote for American Cinematographer:
Now, split diopters are nothing new, but we used them in a fairly outrageous fashion. Zoom shots, for instance, as well as pans, etc. The people at Panavision were kind enough to build a 360-degree rotating diopter frame that enabled us to slide the additional elements in and out at any given angle—and in conjunction with a moving camera. The splits or halves were made especially without framework so they could be moved across the shot without incumbrance. A full series of lenses was used on the film and the stops ranged from T/1.2 down to T/11. The diopters were applied generally in the range of T/4.5.1 had a great deal of fun on the splits, especially the moving ones, and the system was extremely helpful when the requirements were there.
Willis' work here and in other films continues to resonate with today's cinematographers.
"There is no greater influence or inspiration in my life as a cinematographer than that of Gordon Willis, ASC," Oscar-winning cinematographer Wally Pfister told The Hollywood Reporter. "His exceptionally bold lighting choices. The careful composition and movement of his camera. His choice of intelligent and thought-provoking material and the directors he collaborated with."
All the President's MenCredit: Warner Bros.
It's worth rewatching this one just to spot how Willis deploys the tool to enhance the storytelling without calling obvious attention to itself.
What's your favorite split diopter shot in All the President's Men?
