Ruthless spy thrills, big-star glitz plus pretensions of political importance: Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway find career-sustaining momentum in this slick, top-talent espionage tale on the fashionable end of post- Watergate paranoia. It’s a box office winner for director Sydney Pollack, who gives the show his special energy — he was Robert Redford’s most consistent payday director. Owen Roizman’s New York images look very good in 4K Ultra HD.

3 Days of the Condor
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1975 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date August 29, 2023 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow, John Houseman, Tina Chen, Michael Kane, Walter McGinn, Addison Powell, Hank Garrett, Carlin Glynn.
Cinematography: Owen Roizman
Production Designer: Stephen B. Grimes
Art Director: Gene Rudolf
Film Editor: Don Guidice
Special effects: Augie Lohman
Original Music: Dave Grusin
Screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr., David Rayfiel from the novel Six Days of the Condorby James Grady
Executive Producer Dino De Laurentiis
Produced by Stanley Schneider
Directed by Sydney Pollack

For a short while back in the post-Watergate years of the middle ’70s, liberal Hollywood generated a short list of potent ‘paranoid conspiracy’ thrillers. The Watergate scandal was eventually commemorated in Alan J. Pakula’s superb non-fiction adaptation of Bernstein & Woodward’s All the President’s Men.  Its feel-good message?  Our politics is a mess, but the American system can heal itself via the Freedom of the Press. Star Robert Redford played a career-defining role as reporter Bob Woodward in that realistic semi-documentary.

Watergate + the previous decade of political assassinations had already inspired a handful of fictional paranoid fantasies depicting right-wing conspiracies. For pure political anxiety, the most important was another film by Alan J. Pakula. The coldly stylized The Parallax View suggests that a technology-fueled intelligence agency, its leaders unknown, has already hijacked American democracy. Reporter Warren Beatty thinks he’s uncovering ‘the Truth to make us Free,’ but instead becomes a Lee Harvey Oswald- like patsy. The very serious Parallax plays like a horror movie. Its highlight is a film within a film sequence that compresses a nightmare of American political extremism into one frightening 3-minute montage.

Before All the President’s Men Robert Redford starred in a conspiracy thriller designed for maximum mainstream audience appeal. Adapted from a 1974 novel by James Grady, 3 Days of the Condor takes pains to function as a by-the-book star vehicle for two of Hollywood’s most desirable matinee idols. Grady’s novel was actually titled Six Days of the Condor, allowing Redford to make jokes about a restricted budget. Did the author call it that to suggest a connection with Fred Zinnemann’s thriller about a Jackal who had only one Day?

The day job didn’t work out for Joe.

Much of 3 Days of the Condor is told as the first-person experience of junior CIA analyst Joe Turner, code name ‘Condor’ (Robert Redford). A literary foundation in Manhattan fronts for a CIA research office. The receptionist is a chain smoker who keeps a pistol in her desk drawer, a configuration apparently lifted from the Michael Caine spy movie The Ipcress File.  Joe Turner is one of six specialized analysts that parse ‘everything published in the world.’  With the aid of computers they sift for keywords and patterns indicating coded secret communications. Joe is also conducting a discreet office romance with fellow analyst Janice (Tina Chen).

Professional killers led by freelance hit man Joubert (Max von Sydow) have been watching the foundation’s front door. After most of the employees have arrived, they invade the offices and murder everyone they can find. Joe escapes only because he’s out getting lunch.

Alone and panicked, Joe knows he’s still a target. He uses his code name Condor to ‘phone home’ to his spymaster J. Higgins (Cliff Robertson), but something feels wrong, off about the call. Sure enough, Joe’s official contact man tries to kill him in an alley, indicating that his co-workers were murdered by someone inside the Agency. With no place to go, Joe kidnaps Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway) at gunpoint and hides out in her apartment, against her will. Who inside the Agency is responsible for the murders?  Joe’s superior J. Higgins (Cliff Robertson) has come to the conclusion that Condor is the renegade killer, and Intelligence chief Mr. Wabash (John Houseman) orders that Condor be eliminated as a threat to security. They don’t know that the real assassins are still on the case, trying to clean up their mistake to keep the cover-up covered up.

It’s a nail-biting spy drama — that wants to be ‘important.’

The smart commercial confection 3 Days of the Condor succeeded as popcorn entertainment, while also claiming to carry an important message about post-Watergate America. Both the spy thrills and the political posturing receive intelligent direction by Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford’s frequent collaborator. Their previous film together was a big-hit romance with Barbra Streisand, which didn’t manage its liberal political message quite as well (some of its blacklist-themed scenes were dropped in post-production).

In Grady’s book, the low-level CIA analyst Condor mostly played a defensive game, showing no particular Super-Spy skills. As embodied by Robert Redford, the film’s Condor out-thinks and out-fights the best spies in the biz, and takes a time-out to bed the leading lady. Redford is given glasses to better read all those books, but his signature wind-blown hairstyle still stays shampoo-fresh, even in the rain.

Redford’s Condor is resourceful in ways that surprise his own superiors. He has a telephone tech background from the Signal Corps, and uses it to hack the analog Bell phone system. He can access unlisted numbers inside CIA headquarters at Langley, to make untraceable phone calls to Higgins and Wabash. (If it’s that easy, why aren’t 20 Soviet spies doing it?)

When Joubert’s machine-gunning assassin (Hank Garrett) invades Kathy’s apartment, Joe adds ‘close-quarters ace warrior’ to his already impressive list of skills. Not bad for an analyst-bookworm: the well-staged fight scene brings back the staccato moves and cutting seen in early 007 movies, in particular Thunderball. No wonder the Agency thinks he’s the killer.

The biggest stretch in both book and film is Condor’s ‘amorous kidnapping’ of Kathy Hale. It’s straight from Hitchcock’s vintage Alfred spy chase formula, which posits that on-the-run spy intrigue is a surefire ignition point for torrid romance. 3 Days of the Condor plays straight to form. Condor chooses Kathy Hale at random yet lucks into the perfect abductee: she lives alone, isn’t the type to panic, and even has a convenient car. Her movie-star looks equal those of her kidnapper. After a few hours holed up in Kathy’s apartment, the conversation turns to sensual exchanges about her ‘lonely’ photographs of empty park benches. Thus commences a ritual that answers a presumed fantasy in the female audience:

When oh when is a drop-dead gorgeous movie star hunk going to kidnap and ravage me?

There must be a movie rule written somewhere: any two attractive people thrust together by danger and desperation will become passionate lovers in fewer than 8.3 hours. Paramount gives Redford and Dunaway’s followers a break by engaging in a soft-focus, multi-dissolve sex scene. Fans made gaga by Robert Redford’s golden locks will approve. Kathy is soon on Joe’s side both morally and amorously, and willing to risk her life for him. Is this the secret to picking up women?

Nowadays this amorous kidnap-sex-love plot device is a PC Kiss of Death. Entire categories of older movies that use it, even in benign form, are being rendered culturally invalid as we speak: Something Wild ’61,  Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Kathy and Condor’s Pillow Break doesn’t stall the film’s momentum, and neither does imminent death and dismemberment cramp the lovers’ sex performance. The hookup in the Hale boudoir wins Joe extra benefits: before he can say Baby You Can Drive My Car, Kathy Hale is now acting like a spy herself. She becomes Condor’s wing-woman, chaffeuring him around the city and even serving as a go-between with Higgins.

Are a random loose end or two left hanging?  How come the entire block wasn’t alerted to the volleys of gunfire in Kathy’s apartment?  How the heck is Kathy going to explain that dead body?  How can she possibly go home — won’t she find the entire cast of TV’s Law & Order be waiting for her?

Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway are on their game at all times, selling the romantic attraction and diverting our attention from credibility issues. The film’s supporting cast is all-Pro as well. Max von Sydow was likely happy to cash in on his new popularity as an international character actor, after all those years making great cinema for Ingmar Bergman, at low Swedish rates. His assassin Joubert is the film’s most courteous character. Apologizing for his mistakes in the foundation massacre, Joubert offers to peform his next CIA killing as a freebie.

The only distracting bit of casting is John Houseman as the Agency bigwig, who offers nostalgic thoughts for the ‘clarity’ of the old OSS days. Houseman is excellent in the role, but in 1975 his indelible association with The Paper Chase got in the way. Yes, we just knew Professor Kingsfield had a second identity as a weary spymaster.

Let’s make the arena Bigger.

The film expands greatly on the book. Most of the action is shifted from D.C. to New York City. In Grady’s original, the murderous CIA conspiracy is a simple coverup for a drug-smuggling operation . . . the rogue element, ‘bad apple’ story hook that now plays every night on reruns of TV shows like N.C.I.S.. In the screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel, the cover-up hides a rogue CIA conspiracy to seize control of the Middle East, to insure Americans access to foreign oil.

Liberals could argue that both versions of the story later became true under Republican administrations. The CIA under Reagan was accused of running drugs (and Reagan’s Oliver North was accused of running arms) to fund counter-insurgencies in Latin America. Twenty years later, President Bush’s neocons deceived the nation to invade Iraq, with (according to liberals) the ultimate aim of shifting the entire region’s resources to American economic ‘influence.’

It’s interesting how technology has caught up with another part of the film’s concept. In 1975, the idea of one office of experts researching ‘everything published’ sounded absurd. Condor’s image of a scanner going through a book one page at a time doesn’t at all seem practical. But if we now take ‘published’ to mean what’s on the Internet, the whole world is now doing exactly the same thing, mining billions of bits of digital content for all kinds of information for all kinds of purposes, political and commercial. It’s now longer science fiction. Special algorithms and now AI do the heavy searching, before human analysts come into the picture.

The wrap-up of 3 Days is managed with a minimum of blood. Joe Turner only kills once, in self-defense, while the Joubert character and his associates continue ‘cleaning house’ at the behest of the actual CIA conspirator. We’re left wondering if a couple of of innocents on the margins were left untouched, or if Joubert killed them off-screen. The assassin exits the picture unscathed, which seems weird. His death was faked so he could continue as a ‘ghost’ killer; now he’s able to walk away because he’s killed his employer?  We wonder why Joe Turner/Condor feels so comfortable with that information, how Joubert can allow him to live, considering what he knows.

Full Spoiler ahead.

Instead of a real resolution, 3 Days offers a dramatic Liberal Statement delivered as a challenge to the audience. Condor confronts Higgins outside the offices of the New York Times: like Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Joe has given his story to the press, so the truth will come out even if Higgins kills him. Even at the end, average audiences still think that Higgins is part of the conspiracy — he claims innocence but defends the conspiracy’s logic.

Higgins explains that CIA’s theorists continually invent contingency ‘game scenarios’ to interfere with foreign governments. It’s done on our behalf — they’re just looking out for us. 1974 brought some troubles with gas shortages. Higgins says that when we can’t heat our houses or drive our cars or get enough to eat, we will demand the gas and the power and won’t care where it comes from.

Higgins asks Joe if he really thinks the Times will print his story. Should we look forward to the Liberal optimism of All The President’s Men or backward to the Liberal pessimism of The Parallax View?  We’re left with a cliffhanger . . . will we Americans Do the Right Thing?  Gosh almighty. The message seems disconnected to the body of the film, an add-on. In the end, does 3 Days only pretend to have something to say?

This reviewer saw 3 Days of the Condor new in a theater, and also projected it at the home of a Hollywood producer. When the show was over, I got the impression that the theater audience enjoyed the movie but were taken by surprise by Robertson’s ‘America won’t care’ speech. At the producer’s private screening, the upscale guests simply scoffed at the finale, as ridiculously far-fetched.

Cliff Robertson’s main ‘America won’t care’ axiom isn’t far off the mark . . . but neither is it shocking news. It’s no big revelation that people everywhere choose self-interest over Doing What’s Right.   Even in some of his eco-documentaries Robert Redford acknowledges that ordinary people won’t choose clean energy, etc., on their own. If we can’t get past that, the joke will be on us.

Robert Redford would expressed this disillusion directly in his movie about the 1950s TV game show cheating scandals, Quiz Show. The message is that America ignored the scandal’s ethics lesson about cheating. Redford ends with a shot of a studio audience directly laughing at the camera — at us in the theater audience. The joke is on us, literally.

The KL Studio Classics 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of 3 Days of the Condor is touted as a brand-new remaster in 4K, in HDR and Dolby Vision. Owen Roizman’s fine camerawork on the streets of Manhattan has a slightly gritty appearance. NYC is attractive in the rain & cold — at least it is in the movies. Roizman’s pre-dawn lighting is remarkable, dark and monochromatic but never artificial. Design-wise, we note a number of ‘neutral’ shots that have a bright red accent somewhere in the frame . . . perhaps serving as a symbolic flag of danger?  The image flatters the fine work throughout . . . we only wondered about Cliff Robertson’s hair, which may be real but simply didn’t convince.

Composer Dave Grusin’s main theme gets the show off to a lively start, and returns with a good, unobtrusive underscore. The love theme in the sex scene is quite good as well.

CineSavant’s previous Blu-ray from Paramount had no extras at all. This release contains a 4K disc with the feature and two commentaries; the Blu-ray repeats the feature and commentaries and adds the video extras. Director Sydney Pollack’s commentary could be fairly old; the fine director passed away in 2008. His track is slow and sparse but everything he says is focused. He mentions the ‘computer typeface’ used for the titles, and reminds us that 1975 was before most desktop computers.

Pollock says that some revelations about CIA misdeeds became news just before the film was finished, which made him nervous — would it reflect badly on his movie’s theme?   The director gets very quiet at the finish, and doesn’t comment on the freeze-frame ending. Were alternate endings filmed?

Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson’s commentary is new. They have a lot talk about as this show’s every facet was raked over by the trades and recalled in participant interviews and books. They know and respect the picture; their leisurely discussion wanders but is never dull.

An hourlong 2004 documentary follows director Pollack around as he talks about his entire life to date while trying to put together a movie deal. His proposed project with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn seems to have come to pass, as The Interpreter was released the next year.

A 24-minute 2003 featurette More About the Condor lets Robert Redford and Pollock speak their minds as they remember the film’s development — their description of the original book isn’t flattering, and they are eager to explain how their changes and David Rayfiel’s scripting invented an entire new, topical story about oil instead of drugs.

The movie locates the CIA’s official New York office in The World Trade Center.  Was that actually true?  Just the presence of the Twin Towers makes the film seem ominous, and a bit sad. We’re told that this was one of Paramount’s last features to carry a full artwork mountain, before the company adopted a simple graphic mountain logo.

Written with an assist from ‘B,’ who guesses that the film’s key poster art, with the graphic of the stars kissing on a coin, may have been altered. Why a coin?  ‘B’ suggests that the original art may have shown the lovers on the Official Seal of the CIA.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

3 Days of the Condor
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent 5.1 Surround and 2.0 Lossless Audio
Supplements:
New audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
Audio commentary by Sydney Pollack
2004 Documentary Something About Sydney Pollack (59:05)
2003 Featurette More About the Condor (24:56) (Blu-ray disc only)
Theatrical trailers
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD disc and one Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September 4, 2023
(6988cond)

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