Sydney Pollack RIP

Sydney Pollack, Filmmaker New and Old
By A. O. SCOTT

Sydney Pollack’s career as a director blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s, but in many ways he was a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.

The story of the New Hollywood, dominated by a wild bunch of ambitious, iconoclastic would-be auteurs, is by now overgrown with nostalgia and legend-mongering, but Mr. Pollack’s place in that legend suggests continuity rather than upheaval. The vitality of motion pictures has always been sustained by craftsmen with a modicum of business sense and the ability to tell a good story. Mr. Pollack, who died on Monday at 73, was never (and never claimed to be) a great innovator or a notable visual stylist. If he could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be to one of the great individualists like Howard Hawks or John Ford, who stamped their creative personalities onto every project, whatever the genre or the level of achievement. Mr. Pollack was more like William Wyler: highly competent, drawn to projects with a certain quality and prestige and able above all to harness the charisma of movie stars to great emotional and dramatic effect.

Just about any film by Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, for instance, will be immediately and primarily identifiable as such, no matter who’s in it. But if you think of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” you’ll remember Jane Fonda, so desperate and defiant and sad as she pushes herself through a Depression-era dance marathon. “Tootsie” is Dustin Hoffman’s movie. “This Property Is Condemned” will conjure up Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, oddly cast but nonetheless generating Southern Gothic heat in an overripe Tennessee Williams scenario. And it is Mr. Redford who defines Mr. Pollack’s oeuvre nearly as much as the director himself. Over nearly 25 years, from “This Property Is Condemned” to “Havana,” they worked together on westerns (“Jeremiah Johnson,”); love stories both sweeping (“The Way We Were”) and intimate (“The Electric Horseman”); paranoid thrillers (“Three Days of the Condor”); and high-toned literary adaptations (“Out of Africa.”)

Those movies demonstrate both Mr. Redford’s consistency — he’s handsome, stoic, adjusting the mix of sensitivity and mischief depending on the role — and Mr. Pollack’s range. He was an exemplary mainstream filmmaker, which is not to say that he was a timid or unimaginative director. As a producer, he was certainly prolific and eclectic, putting his name on (and his energy and enthusiasm behind) projects as varied in scale and style as “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Forty Shades of Blue.” In both capacities he worked, comfortably and with conviction, within the parameters of the Hollywood “A picture” tradition, turning out high-quality commercial entertainments that did not shy away from ethical and political engagement.

His death is a reminder that things have changed, that the kind of movie he made, which used to be the kind of movie everyone wanted to make (and to see), may be slipping into obsolescence. His last completed feature, “The Interpreter,” with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn hashing out the traumas of postcolonial African politics at the United Nations, struggled to find the mix of topicality and high intrigue that had come so easily in the ’70s, but it mostly seemed forced and preposterous. The blend of big stars with meaty, serious themes; lavish production values; and unstinting professionalism that once would have seemed foolproof looked downright anachronistic.

The old A pictures, made for mass appeal and Oscar glory, no longer have the industry cachet or cultural impact they used to. The studios send their specialty divisions out in search of awards on the relative cheap, while action franchises, raunchy comedies and family-friendly animation bring in the big money and attract the heavy investments.

There are exceptions, from time to time, movies that try to steer between the art house and the lowest common denominator in the great Hollywood middle-brow tradition. Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton,” a tale of corporate malfeasance with a smart script, a few murders and George Clooney’s charisma, may be the best recent example. It’s hardly an accident that Mr. Pollack’s name appears in the credits twice, as a producer and as a member of the cast.

It would be nice if “Michael Clayton” turned out not to be an anomaly but rather a sign that the old mainstream has not entirely run dry. And I hope that there are at least aspiring filmmakers and producers out there who dream of being the next Sydney Pollack.

I believe Kehr's point is that IN A WORLD with Burt, Random Hearts wd not have been a Pollack project.

-- Dr Morbius, Wednesday, May 28, 2008 7:59 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

kind of a stupid point. i mean, iffy to even consider harrison ford as an example of diminished movie stardom.

i mean burt lancaster was in "airport" for christ's sake.

C'mon, it's not fair to cherrypick a potboiler!

How many watchable films has Ford done since turning 50? Lancaster did The Leopard, The Train, Seven Days in May, The Professionals, The Swimmer, Ulzana's Raid, Go Tell the Spartans, Atlantic City, Local Hero. All highly memorable.

how many watchable posts has dr morbius done since turning 50?

that might've been funny/sad in yr trademark hipster Ebonics

Nice James Wolcott obit

TCM will revise its primetime schedule on Monday, June 2nd in order to honor the late director Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?):

Here is the new lineup for Monday, June 2

8:00 PM The Slender Thread (’65) (his directorial debut)
10:00 PM Three Days of the Condor (’75)
12:00 AM Tootsie (’82)
2:00 AM Jeremiah Johnson (’72)

Watched and loved Sketches of Frank Gehry today. Didn't learn 'til watching the extras that Pollack used Errol Morris's editor. Interesting how the whole movie has these charming hyper-masculine guys, and the Gehry detractor (Hal Foster) is Michael Stipe's doppelganger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9orvtStdY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9orvtStdY

weird to see him w/ a producer credit on margaret

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/margaret/

I was worried that he'd be directing from the beyond

heh, i noticed that too johnny. that's how you know it's been on the shelf forever!

wow, that's actually coming out?

tot forgot his hilarious single-scene doctor in Death Becomes Her

dude was good for a memorable cameo

He's talky but on point on the Tootsie commentary track.

Watched a nice new DVD edition of 3 Days of the Condor at the weekend, which I'd not seen before. Uber 70s American cinema - jazz fusion score, New York locations photographed by Owen Roizman in his best French Connection/Pelham 123 style (the Twin Towers feature heavily), paranoid conspiracy vibes a la Parallax View or The Conversation, Max Von Sydow as an ice cool assassin, groovy computer font used for the credits over shots of 'state of the art' mainframes, people smoking all the time, etc etc. Film sags a little in the middle - there's a Stockholm Syndrome romance between Redford and Dunaway that's pretty ludicrous and slightly distasteful - but the freeze frame ending is suitably bleak and the motor of the plot ("It's all about oil") is still very timely. A pretty slick piece of entertainment.

too bad they killed that off rad Asian girl so soon

ditto about that Stockholm thingie. maybe kinky & shady avant la lettre.

yeah i remember that movie as being really good -- nothing profound, but very engrossing.

Saw two Pollack films this week (happenstance, no design): The Interpreter at home, a rep screening of Three Days of the Condor tonight. The Interpreter was a little better the second time--I'd say it's better than Lumet's last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. (It was Pollack's last non-documentary.) Kidman's very good. Penn is the one thing I don't like--affectatious world-weariness. Always have the same reaction to Condor: Dunaway's great, ditto the ending, but I find the last third drags a bit. I swoon over Tina Chen.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/chen.jpg

I was thinking how interesting it was for Kubrick to cast Pollack in Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick must have liked him as a director--don't think he'd cast him otherwise. They're so different.

I think The Interpreter's also the only film I've ever seen that had Moby Grape on the soundtrack. Penn pulls the plug on them so he can play Lyle Lovett. Sounds about right.

he can be seen kinda frantically waving his arms at the camera crew during the Aretha doc

He gives himself about five minutes of screen-time in The Interpreter. (I didn't even realize he co-directed the Aretha film till a few days ago.)

I was thinking how interesting it was for Kubrick to cast Pollack in Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick must have liked him as a director--don't think he'd cast him otherwise. They're so different.

Harvey Keitel was originally cast in this role though. Keitel dropped out after shooting went on for too long and was replaced by Pollack.

https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/57485048_10218938139749034_2461046102040772608_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&_nc_eui2=AeHt54FYnF9o3bfAwKRy5Hi441LMlKRjWSUnOnDioLm05hJkOfh3HEpWJBdYyjfONxYAgNxEjzSU2hZV7U8A4X431anydCIsi5RScc0rOcDsyA&_nc_ht=scontent.fman2-1.fna&oh=59693db0b178a0b94fd20d02af667cd3&oe=5D38C26D

Sydney Pollack says he can do it in three... pic.twitter.com/DpZmIh1RPi

— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) April 18, 2019