Three Days of the Condor ***** (1975, Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Max Von Sydow, Cliff Robertson) – Classic Movie Review 1154

Sydney Pollack’s sizzling 1975 suspense classic thriller film Three Days of the Condor stars Robert Redford as bookish CIA researcher who comes back from lunch one day to discover his co-workers murdered.

Director Sydney Pollack’s sizzling 1975 suspense classic thriller film Three Days of the Condor offers an eagerly taken perfect role for Robert Redford as Joseph Turner, an innocent bookish CIA researcher on the run from the evil Joubert (Max Von Sydow) after his clandestine offices in New York City are totally wiped out and all his six co-workers left dead in a raid by a group of armed killers and he narrowly escapes with his life.

A mild-mannered researcher paid to read books, newspapers and magazines, looking for hidden meanings and new ideas, Joseph Turner (code name Condor) returns from lunch to find all of his colleagues assassinated. He legs it, escapes an attempt to kill him and hides away in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of Kathy Hale (played by the charismatic Faye Dunaway), a woman he sees randomly in a ski shop.

He holds her prisoner till over time they become lovers. But his hiding place is discovered after Joubert spots him driving her car and a hitman shows up at the apartment. Soon everyone he trusted is trying to kill him, so Condor must find out who did the killings and then come in from the cold before the pursuing hitmen get him.

Redford’s frequent collaborator Pollack delivers a gripping, intelligent, fast-moving Hitchcock-style conspiracy thriller, which offers excellent roles for the stars plus Max Von Sydow (making a chilling villain), John Houseman (as Mr Wabash) and Cliff Robertson (as Higgins). Its political paranoia conspiracy ideas are very much in the vein of the previous year’s The Parallax View, also co-scripted by Lorenzo Semple Jnr, and anticipate Alan J Pakula’s Watergate thriller All the President’s Men the following year, also with Redford.

Three Days of the Condor is mostly very urgent and pacy, but perhaps seems just a tiny little bit overlong at 118 minutes: as it was adapted by Lorenzo Semple Jr and David Rayfiel from James Grady’s 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor, the runtime could be shorter than its present one.

Semple and Rayfiel received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.

The film was nominated for the 1976 Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Fredric Steinkamp and Don Guidice).

Faye Dunaway was nominated for the 1976 Golden Globem for Best Motion Picture Actress – Drama.

The film is shot on location in New York City, New Jersey, and Washington DC.

Release date: September 25, 1975 (US).

It was popular. On a budget of $7.8 million, it took $ 41.5 million at the US/ Canada box office.

All the music is by Dave Grusin.

Under fire for his film being ‘political propaganda’, liberally minded Pollack said: ‘I didn’t want this picture to be judged. It’s a movie. I intended it always as a movie. I never had any pretensions about the picture and it’s making me very angry that I’m getting pretensions stuck on me like tails on a donkey. If I wanted to be pretentious, I’d take the CIA seal and advertise this movie and really take advantage of the headlines.’

John Ivan Simon (born Simmon; May 12, 1925 − November 24, 2019)

John Simon, the author of the book Six Days of the Condor, was theatre critic for New York magazine for 36 years. He chronicled his feelings about how his book was rewritten for the film: ‘That the action has been relocated from sleepy Washington to furious New York City, that almost all names have been changed, and that the plot has been vastly over-complicated, is of lesser interest than that a straight genre film has been overloaded into an elegy of private, political, and finally, cosmic pessimism, a kind of national, if not metaphysical, guilt film to enchant the disenchanted.’

He said the lesson from the film was that ‘we must be grateful to the CIA. It does what our schools no longer do – engage some people to read books’.

Lorenzo Semple Jnr

Lorenzo Semple Jnr died from natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, on March 28 2014, aged 91. He is known for his work on Papillon (1973),  Three Days of the Condor, The Drowning Pool, King Kong, Flash Gordon (1980) and Never Say Never Again (1983). He wrote the pilot episode for the 60s Batman TV series, and served as story editor, as well as the 1966 Batman feature film.

The cast

The cast are Robert Redford as Joe Turner (Condor), Faye Dunaway as Kathy Hale, Cliff Robertson as Higgins, Max von Sydow as Joubert, John Houseman as Wabash, Addison Powell as Leonard Atwood, Walter McGinn as Sam Barber, Tina Chen as Janice Chong, Michael Kane as S W Wicks, Don McHenry as Dr Lappe, Michael Miller as Fowler, Jess Osuna as The Major, Dino Narizzano as Harold, Helen Stenborg as Mrs Russell, Patrick Gorman as Martin, Hansford Rowe as Jennings, Carlin Glynn as Mae Barber, Hank Garrett as The Mailman, James Keane as Store Clerk, Sal Schillizzi as himself, Sydney Pollack as Ben and as Taxi Driver, and Dorothi Fox as Nurse.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1,154

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/