MUCH better than Slate's earlier egregious decision to lead with a hit piece on him.
Look, any filmmaker of any weight is allowed to be subject to some point/counterpoint assessment of strengths and weaknesses upon his/her death (the death matters most to the family, after all), but to LEAD with such a misbegotten analysis of Pollack as appeared elsewhere in Slate this week is...journalistic malpractice.
Sydney Pollack was indeed ultimately a maker of entertainment, and for awhile there in the late sixties and seventies, he hit more than he missed.
I tell you what about "The Way We Were": when it came out, it was the "Casablanca" of its year and several thereafter; EVERYBODY had some feelings about the final failed reunion between Redford and Streisand. The rest of the movie didn't matter, given that killer goodbye scene.
But there were some good lines in "The Way We Were," too:
Redford: (I) make fun of politicians. What else can you do with them?
-- Redford: Its grown-up politics, Katie! Its stupid and dangerous and people get hurt.
Fitting enough for our times, yes?
Though my personal fave is Redford's sly putdown of Streisand's Campus Communist stridency:
Redford: OK, comes the revolution, maybe we'll all have a sense of humor.
---
Pollack followed up the big hit "Way We Were" with the big hit "Three Days of the Condor," which, while not quite a classic, certainly gets cited a LOT as a seminal American spy thriller. Its a classy and literate entertainment, still relevant today in its look at Middle Eastern oil policy and American politics, and it was melancholy and unsettling in its ending.
Oh, it DID have an all-star cast: Redford, Faye Dunaway (fresh from "Chinatown," )John Houseman(fresh from his Oscar role in "The Paper Chase,") Cliff Robertson(Oscared for "Charly"), and Max Von Sydow as a beautifully quiet and philosophical political hitman, who never takes sides("My only question is "'How much?'") and offers Redford a soulful warning about his imminent death: "It will be a nice day, the first day of spring. Someone, maybe a friend, someone you know, will pull up in a car, open the door, and offer you a ride..."
As Hitchcock had Grant/Stewart, as Scorcese has/had DeNiro and Leo, Pollack had Robert Redford, who was, for a time, the superstar with the best mix of Old Hollywood glamour and New Hollywood cool. Redford only did "The Way We Were" because of Pollack, otherwise Streisand would have blown Ryan O'Neal, Ken Howard, or Dennis Cole off the screen. (Yes, Dennis Cole.) Streisand got the Oscar nom for "The Way We Were," but it is really Redford's story. (Redford got his sole acting Oscar nom the same year, 1973, for "The Sting"; it is believed it was for "The Way We Were" too, deservedlly.)
Pollack used Redford well from "This Property Is Condemned" to "Jerimiah Johnson" to "WWW" to "Three Days" to "The Electric Horseman" (which was a charmingly grizzled return to the screen for Redford after three years away, less a war movie cameo) to "Out of Africa" (where a crinkled Redford retooled his "WWW" persona and evoked instant nostalgia)....and then finally fizzled by using a TOO grizzled Redford (opposite a gorgegously RIGHT Lena Olin) in "Havana" (1990.)
Indeed, by the 90's, Pollack was striking out more than hitting. "The Firm" hit because of the John Grisham material (before his plots got old) and the great cast, but everything else was a smooth, expensive miss. ("Sabrina" was all wrong because a three-star movie from 1954 with Bogart, Hepburn, and Holden could only afford one star in the 90's -- Harrison Ford -- and so the vehicle collapsed.)
By then, Pollack had figured out that producing other folks' movies and acting a fair amount was a way to move away from a dwindling directorial career. His performances were of one note, but great ones: rich, arrogant, authoritative villains, whether reading Tom Cruise the riot act in "Eyes Wide Shut" (in a role Harvey Keitel quit and Pollack better fit), or humiliating lawyer John Travolta ("You didn't go to Harvard? I thought you were a Harvard man") in "A Civil Action."
Back before Redford was his main meal ticket, Pollack was favored by Burt Lancaster, and together they made two well-regarded sixties cult films. One was a racially aware Western called "The Scalphunters" (Lancaster and Ossie Davis palled around and mixed it up with Telly Savalas and a delightfully lewd Shellye Winters in support); the other was an arty and allegorical anti-war film called "Castle Keep" that still gets written up in the film journals.
Back TO Redford: "Jeremiah Johnson" put Redford in a shaggy beard and bad buckskins for the whole movie, but was a very SEVENTIES hit -- coming back in re-release after re-release after re-release from 1972 to 1975 and racking up solid box office. The lure was evidently its allegorical vision of a "back to nature" frontier mountain man's life; the Birkenstocks-and-granola generation could relate. And "Tootsie" of course. A great comedy (though the final scene with Hoffman and Lange ain't got nothing on "The Way We Were'" finale.)
Two other fine Pollacks:
"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" put Pollack on the map for Oscar noms, and gave us our first glimpse of "serious Jane Fonda." Gig Young got a comeback Oscar and the movie, while unrelentingly grim (a murderous Depression-era danceathon became a metaphor for life), was still plush and expensive-looking in the Pollack manner.
Not to mention: "Absence of Malice": Pollack did this one with Redford's pal Paul Newman. It is smooth and involving throughout, but really comes to life with a great climactic scene in which folksy old Wilford Brimley as a federal attorney lays waste to a roomful of conniving politicos and media lawyers, as Newman looks on, resplendent in blue suit and eyes.
In perhaps one nod to Pollack's directorial ego, I will note that when Pollack hosted Turner Classic Movies' series of great movies called "The Essentials" a few years ago, he actually chose "Tootsie" -- HIS OWN MOVIE -- as one of the list of 13 for that season. And personally introduced it as "An Essential." Well, directors can't have false pride.
The Scalphunters, Castle Keep, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, The Electric Horseman, Absence of Malice, Tootsie,Out of Africa (a rather sad tale, that, and yes, a Best Picture/Director winner), Havana, The Firm.... ....I'll take 'em.
They were some great date nights at the movies, and a few scenes from them, I'll never forget. Memories, like the corners of my mind.
