Fifteen years ago, the great American director, producer and actor, best known for directing such films as “Joe Bass Relentless”, “Ardennes 44, damn it”, “So they don’t kill horses?”, “Red Crow .. not my scalp”, died. “Three Days of the Condor”, “Electric Horseman”, “Correct News”, “Tootsie”, “Partner”, “Translator” and many others.
“In films, I am fascinated by the search for human character, peace, tranquility and the priority of existence over everything else. It’s the only reason I make films. I watch other people’s films, and maybe I like them: I just never know how to make them like that.» (Sydney Pollack)
“Elegant and discreet, Pollak is not a director of our time. A lover of Kazan and Stevens, he cannot help but feel out of place in a world that has forgotten the sense of proportion, body, humanism and, of course, feelings. According to his own statement, he delves into the genres from the inside, without radicalizing anything; his experiments are built on the elegance of composition, and not on the juxtaposition of the incongruous. The author is attracted by indirectness, today’s cinema of effects and entertainment can only be alien to him“(Franco La Polla in Franco La Polla – edited -, Sydney Pollack. Film director and gentlemanLindau, Turin, 1997)
Born in Lafayette, Indiana in July 1934, former small screen actor, including Competition for Aaron Gold (1960) directed by Norman Lloyd episode of TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents – aspiring actor (together with Robert Redford) in Military hunting (1962) by David Sanders, Sidney Pollack makes his debut as a personality in film directing in a psychological melodrama, – Life is running on wires (1965) – with Sidney Poitier, Anne Bancroft and Telly Savalas – and a social mural of literary inspiration – This girl belongs to everyone (1966), based on Tennessee Williams and starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford.
An astute researcher of genres, he uses their features in a metaphorical way. So the racial comparison is based on a picaresque western – Joe Bass, Relentless (1968), with Burt Lancaster, Ossie Davis and Telly Savalas – a film about the war, also through figurative pastiche, recalls the dramatic confrontation of the values imposed by the war – Ardennes 44 hell (1969) with Burt Lancaster, Patrick O’Neill and Jean-Pierre Aumont – an insistent look at the social ritual of the past in its agonized claustrophobic dimension refers to the cultural state of the present – dramatic Isn’t that how horses are killed? (1969) with Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and Susanna Yorke, which marks director Pollak’s true statement.
Directed by his friend Robert Redford (eight films in about twenty-five years between 66 and 90), the mask of seventies American progressivism, he is one of the pioneers of the pro-Indian and anti-militarist Western. Red crow… you won’t get my scalp! (1972), consider almost unanimously – together with contemporaries I will kill Willy the Kid Abraham Polonsky, A man named Horse Elliot Silverstein Little Big Man Arthur Penn, Blue soldier Ralph Nelson e White man, go with your God! Richard S. Sarafian – as one of the best Westerns of the so-called New Hollywood of the late 1960s – early 1970s – as well as in the “leftist” look at American history in the 1930s – 1950s (i.e. from Roosevelt to McCarthyism ) through the fusion of love and politics – how we were (1973) with Barbra Streisand and R. Redford.
In subsequent years, he travels on a spy thriller on a denunciation with the famous Three Days of the Condor (1975) based on the book by James Grady. Six Days of the Condor interpreted by Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow, Cliff Robertson and John Houseman, or renews the western in a twilight vein with a superb – and unfortunately unfairly underrated – electric rider (1979), with Robert Redford, Jane Fonda and John Saxon, becoming the producer of his films on works “below the line” – Yakuza (1975), with Robert Mitch and Brian Keith One moment, one life (1977) based on the book by Eric Marie Remarque. Heaven has no preference starring Al Pacino and Martha Keller.
Right to report (1981) starring Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban and Melinda Dillon. fourth force Orson Welles, Trump card Billy Wilder The Last Threat Richard Brooks, face in the crowd Elia Kazan First page B. Wilder, Fifth power Sidney Lumet All the President’s people Alan J. Pakula, Under fire Roger Spottiswoode Broadcast News – From Inside the News James L. Brooks as one of the best American journalistic films ever made.
The Eighties reveal it in a snarky comedy – Tootsie (1982), with Dustin Hoffman and Candice Bergen – but also in more “academic” films – the famous My Africa (1985), based on the book of the same name by Karen Blixen and interpreted by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, albeit with great fidelity.
A little less “in focus” in tormented sentimental stories – Havana (1990), with Robert Redford and Lena Olin Crossed Fates (1998), with Kristin Scott Thomas and Harrison Ford – and in a thriller – Partner (1993), based on the book of the same name by John Grisham starring Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman – after Sabrina (1995), with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, Fanny Ardant, Angie Dickinson and Richard Crenna – an elegant remake of Billy Wilder’s famous film of the same name (1954) with Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden and Martha Hyer, starting in the nineties, he has played a number of excellent roles as an actor. Husbands and wives (1992) Woody Allen and with him, Main characters (1992) by Robert Altman), culminating in Eyes wide shut (1998), Stanley Kubrick (in his latest direction), and the producer’s happy intuition – fabulous bakers (1989) and Provincial killings (1993) Steve Kloves, or comedy Sliding doors (1998) Peter Howitt.
As an actor, he also appears in death makes you beautiful (1992) Robert Zemeckis Civil action (1998) Steven Zaillan Crime hypothesis (2002) Roger Mitchell Partly by accident, partly by choice (2006) Daniel Thompson Witness to love (2008) Paul Weiland.
His return to directing (which, unfortunately, will be his last) is marked by a thriller. Translator (2005) with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, for which he obtained permission to film some scenes inside the United Nations building in New York (permission denied in the late 1950s to Alfred Hitchcock for the famous international intrigue). as well as production Michael Clayton (2007) by Tony Gilroy with George Clooney, Tilda Swinton (Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) and Tom Wilkinson, one of the most successful classic legal films of the last fifteen to twenty years (it has nothing to envy to the great films from the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties directed by great directors such as Sidney Lumet, Stanley Kramer, Robert Mulligan, Alan J. Pakula and S. Pollack himself) in which he also appears as an actor (in a very poignant role, one of the best performances of his career) .
Other films he has produced include Chords on stage (1980) Jerry Schatzberg Rapid success (1984) Alan Rudolph, Thousand Lights of New York (1988) James Bridges Presumption of innocence (1990) by Alan J. Pakula, based on the book of the same name by Scott Thurow and played by Harrison Ford, His Majesty of Las Vegas (1991) David S. Ward, Another crime (1991) Kenneth Branagh Run for a dream (1992) Edward Zwick Looking for Bobby Fischer (1993) Steven Zaillan Reason and feeling (1996) by Ang Lee, based on the Jane Austen novel of the same name, starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Mr Ripley’s Talent (1998) Anthony Minghella, One night to decide (2000) Philip Haas, Dry (2001) Paddy Britnaha birthday girl (2001) Jez Butterworth Heaven (2002) Tom Twiker The Quiet American (2002) Philip Noyce, Return to Cold Mountain (2003) Anthony Minghella, forty shades of blue (2005) Ira Sachs catch fire (2006) Philip Noyce, Complicity and suspicion (2006) A. Minghella, Reader – aloud (2008) Stephen Daldry Margaret (2011) by Kenneth Lonergan, released posthumously (three years after his death).
His career was interrupted only by death, which found him after a short illness at the age of seventy-three, when he was still seething on all fronts.
As a further confirmation and demonstration of his eclecticism, his “multifaceted inventiveness” of nature and outstanding intelligence, one cannot fail to mention the fact that Sydney Pollack has been active for more than thirty years both in promoting new cinematic talents and at the same time in preserving the great masterpieces of the past (he was a founding partner of the Robert Redford Sundance Institute and the Martin Scorsese Film Foundation).