E. de Antonio; Documentary Film Maker

Emile de Antonio, the self-styled “unreconstructed radical” whose film documentaries ranged from outraged attacks on Richard M. Nixon to a controversial defense of the Weather Underground that resulted in his being placed under FBI surveillance, has died of a heart attack.

De Antonio died last Friday in front of his home in New York City’s Lower East Side. He was believed to be 70.

Son of a physician who worked alternately as a longshoreman, barge captain and war surplus broker, De Antonio was in the same 1940 class at Harvard as John F. Kennedy. He became a doctoral candidate in English and later an opera translator and instructor at the College of William and Mary.

It was at Harvard, he said later, that he was converted to Marxism.

De Antonio came to documentary filmmaking and writing, he told “Contemporary Authors” in 1986, because he found Hollywood pictures “industrial products” that slighted their subjects.

His first film, “Point of Order,” was produced in 1964 and was culled from 188 hours of TV kinescope footage on the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. It presented a vicious portrait of the late Wisconsin senator as he tried to probe the presence of Communists in the military.

Three years later De Antonio and Mark Lane produced “Rush to Judgment,” which challenged the Warren Commission Report that claimed Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of Kennedy.

His next scathing indictment was of President Nixon in the 1971 film “Millhouse: A White Comedy,” which the New York Times described as “exuberantly opinionated.”

Based on footage of Nixon and quoting liberally from the former President’s speeches, “Millhouse” was De Antonio’s greatest commercial success.

In 1976 he became the center of an FBI investigation when he produced “Underground,” in which he interviewed five fugitive radicals of the Weather Underground who forbade him to film their faces.

He claimed later that the FBI had attempted to coerce him into revealing his contacts with the group of political terrorists, and with an outpouring of support from many Hollywood stars was able to defy grand jury subpoenas to surrender his raw film interviews.

His other films included “That’s Where the Action Is,” about New York’s 1965 mayoral campaign; “In the Year of the Pig,” a 1969 anti-Vietnam War picture; “Painters Painting,” a 1973 film that was credited with luring Andy Warhol into experimental filmmaking; “In the King of Prussia,” a 1982 re-creation of the trial of peace activists Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and his last, “Mr. Hoover and I,” which his wife, Nancy, said was his life as seen through government eyes, particularly those of the FBI.

In addition to his wife he is survived by a son, a daughter, a brother and five sisters.