By N.S.
“Brief Synopsis
“A fiery liberal fights to make her marriage to a successful writer work.”
N.S.: The Way We were is about two Communists, Stalinists, if memory serves, at Columbia University and then in Hollywood, played by Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.
Does tcm’s rhetorical strategem mean that “liberal” is just a euphemism for communist?
The picture is a beautiful period piece (late 1930s-late 1940s, plus a denouement in the ‘50s) by the late Sydney Pollack, who was the best director of his era at that sort of thing, and I guess was a closet Red himself. (Another brilliant period piece by Pollack, his 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, starring Jane Fonda, was pretty straightforward, Marxist propaganda.)
TWWW was written by Arthur Laurents, who was himself a Red, but who said he never joined the Party, because he was afraid that his homosexuality would bring discredit upon it. (Homosexuality was considered deviant, rather than exemplary behavior on both sides of the aisle politically, back in those days.)
The picture is best known as the vehicle for the title song, as sung by Streisand, with music by Marvin Hamlisch, and lyrics by Alan and the late Marilyn Bergman. The song and Hamlisch’s score (same music) both won Oscars.
I don’t know if Barbra Streisand is a socialist or a communist, but Robert Redford dispelled all doubts about his politics with his 2012 picture, in which he both starred and directed, The Company You Keep, which depicted 1970s communist terrorists living as fugitives in the present, in a sympathetic, heroic light. Another giveaway was the depiction of the young J-school grad reporter (played by Red thug Shia LaBeouf) as a neo-conservative, whom the Reds manage to morally redeem. Nobody in this day and age graduates from J-school a neoconservative--j-school exists to search and destroy anyone to the right of Stalin--and communists could not possibly morally redeem, as opposed to morally corrupting anyone.
With that said, The Company You Keep is stunning propaganda, with brilliant writing and performances... and the direction ain't too shabby, either.
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4 comments:
I've never seen the flick--great song,of course--but I was more a Paul Newman,Jack Nicholson fan."The Natural" was a decent baseball movie,but other than BCATSK and the other co-teaming of Redford and Newman 4 years later,I've not watched many of Redford's films.I really never knew the politics of movie stars at all.Probably a good thing.
--GRA
No thanks, I don't want to watch any movies praising communists and I can't stand Hanoi Jane Fonda or the hideous Streisand.
That is why they call them fellow travelers.
Pretty-boy actors like Redford were often cast cast as amoral psychos or outright killers in TV dramas of the early 1960s (Redford was even cast as Death personified on TWILIGHT ZONE!). Young Bill Shatner played murderers on several occasions. All Hell broke loose when teen idol Fabian played an amoral killer on BUS STOP in 1961, leading to Senate investigations on TV violence! All those shows had heavy psychological themes and were undoubtedly onto something truthful about the likes of Redford et al.
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