The Way We Were (1973 Sydney Pollack)

The 1930s. Jewish left wing politicist Barbra Streisand falls for high school jock (and writer) Robert Redford (who Q thins looks too old to be at college - and at 36ish at the time, that's hard to argue with).

Redford and mate Bradford Dillman join the Navy and then fall into Hollywood, but the McCarthy witch hunt rears its ugly head and Redford - who's fought enough intellectual battles by this point - declares himself out (despite the presence of a new baby).

All to Marvin Hamlisch's overwrought interpretations of the theme song, endlessly, often over montages that look like they were filmed with dialogue. What is supervising editor Margaret Booth doing? Is she trying to 'save the film'? Did it only do well at the box office on the strength of the Streisand / Redford pairing? (I certainly remember the film magazines I used to see at the time being full of Redford articles, glossy photos and poster pull-outs.)

It can't help feeling that it doesn't really leave much of an impressions. IT's a wee bit exhausting and feels full of nothing.  Time Out's reviewer thought that Redford's performance was the more interesting, in its seeds of self-destruction anticipating the not terribly well rated Great Gatsby the following year.

Photographed by Harry Stradling Jr. in Panavision.

Redford asleep already and we haven't even made it to the credits scene

With: Lois Chiles ('other woman'), Patrick O'Neal, Viveca Lindfors (fellow Hollywood radical), Murray Hamilton, Herb Edelman. (Yes, the scenes in the radio station don't really do anything - what's her job?? - except for not writing.)

Part of the nostalgia boom of the 1970s that unwittingly may have come from Peter Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show, which spawned Sommer of 42 and the lik e- a nostalgia boom that also took in The Godfather, let's not forget, but somehow sat uneasily against America's more progressive films like those of Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson. Interesting in that there's  a very, very long dissolve on Barbra at one point that hadn't been done until Peter did it first in TLPS.