Reeling Backward: "The Way We Were" (1973)

"It's about a Jewish woman with a big nose and her blond boyfriend who move to Hollywood, and it's during the blacklist and it puts a strain on their relationship."
                         --Lisa Loopner (aka Gilda Radner), describing "The Way We Were"

"The Way We Were" is one of the few well-known love stories that defies conventional male/female roles. The usual central dynamic can be summed up by what feminist critics call "the male gaze," in which the way the female character is portrayed is defined by how they are beheld by their romantic male counterpart.

In short: women in the movies exist to be gazed upon, and men exist to do the gazing.

The first few moments of "TWWW" flip this on its head. Barbra Streisand sees Robert Redford, and is so overcome by his beauty she literally gasps, her mouth hanging open like a trap door. Indeed, through virtually every encounter they have in the movie, it is she who is the active pursuer and he is the lackadaisical pursued. She is always looking at him, while he usually has his eyes turned elsewhere.

Director Sydney Pollack photographs Redford with a lustrous quality, like a fallen angel loitering about the Earth to amuse himself. His character, Hubbell Gardiner, is the object of affection to Katie Morosky (Streisand), a passionate leftist political activist. She is the proactive character, while his is entirely reactive. Hubbell's defining characteristic is that he doesn't really have one, existing as a beautiful object upon which Katie (and others) project their own aspirations.

Much is made about Hubbell's blondness, which in the movie is intrinsic to his ability to mesmerize. I have commented before on Hollywood's declining favor for fair-haired male movie stars, and indeed, Redford in the 1970s more or less marked the last of the line of blond sex symbols. Katie refers to Hubbell as her "gorgeous goy guy," and one of her pet moves is to brush the coppery locks on his forehead with her fingers -- less a grooming gesture than a a miser fingering his gold.

Pollack was just establishing himself as a mainstream director, despite a number of features already under his belt. He was brought into the project solely upon the basis of his promise to entice Redford, with who he had just made "Jeremiah Johnson," to take the role opposite Streisand, for whom the part was expressly written.

Hubbell had originally been envisioned by screenwriter Arthur Laurents as a supporting character to the firebrand Katie. Laurents based the story on his college experiences in the 1930s and '40s, transposing his own Jewish identity onto the figure of a woman he admired but never pursued romantically.

Pollack petitioned to expand Hubbell to an equal footing, and reportedly brought in a raft of other writers to change the script around without Laurents' knowledge or consent. Despite some sloppy editing and story construction, "TWWW" was rather well-received at the time and was a huge box office hit.

Laurents ultimately retained the sole writing credit, he and Pollack buried the hatchet and even pursued a sequel, which fell apart in the early 1980s. The idea was still was being batted around as late as 2005.

As for Redford and Pollack, they would go on to make five more pictures together, including "Three Days of the Condor" and "Out of Africa."

Hubbell and Katie encounter each other in college around 1938, hit it off but never become a couple until they meet again at the war's end. She takes the drunken Navy man back to her apartment, where he sleepily has movie sex with her -- read: sweet, and short -- not realizing it's Katie. Later, though, he puts it in on purpose.

They stay a pair the rest of the movie, despite stormy waters and several near-breakups, before Hubbell finally dumps her for good right after she's given birth to their daughter. Later they meet up for a moment sometime in the 1950s, fond remembrances of love lost.

Hubbell is defined as being everything Katie is not: an easygoing, likeable WASP with no strong political convictions or even a core identity beyond being a BMOC in college, and the adult equivalent thereafter. His redeeming attribute is that he's aware of how easily everything comes to him, and is able to write about his privilege with flair and a little distance.

At first jealous of Hubbell's writing talent -- she's crushed when the professor picks his short story, instead of the one she'd been laboring on for weeks, to read aloud to the class -- she eventually becomes his caustic muse, pushing him to write more deeply about his characters and subjects. Forever taking a stand against the latest cause, she's vexed when Hubbell appears to stand for nothing other than his own success and comfort.

Their relationship is defined by a pedestal: Katie places Hubbell upon one, convinced he's the perfect man, except for needing a little prodding from her. He's fascinated by her sense of unfailing certainty, whether it's about politics or his own abilities, while she thinks he needs to push himself harder, in life and in his writing. When they move out to California together so Hubbell can pursue a lucrative screenwriting career, their resentments are slowly stoked to the point of no return.

It's fascinating how passive and inert Hubbell really is. Like a classic romcom woman, he allows himself to be defined by his lover, and then grows to resent the box in which she has placed him. Meanwhile, Katie goes through the paces of being the one who decides she must change, even if in the end she goes back to her old life of rabble-rousing.

The film is probably remembered now more for the title song, sung beautifully by Streisand, than the story itself. The supporting characters don't make much of an impact, the two most notable being Bradford Dillman as Hubbell's best friend, J.J., and Lois Chiles as Carol Ann, who ping-pongs back and forth between the two men.

James Woods and Sally Kirkland both turn up in small roles early in their careers.

Patrick O'Neal plays George Bissinger, the director whom Hubbell is working for on an adaptation of his first novel. As near as I can figure, the screenwriting process goes on for months and even years, which seems unlikely for the late 1940s, when it wasn't unusual for writers and directors to have three feature film credits in a year.

The section about the Blacklist isn't terribly compelling, other than it exacerbates the tension inherent in their relationship. Katie wants Hubbell to speak out against the House Un-American Activities Committee, while he thinks it's best to keep his head down. Entire families will be destroyed for nothing, he argues, while Katie sees that laying down before one monstrosity will only invite a worse one.

Unlike its two stars, "The Way We Were" hasn't aged very well. It feels like it would have been a better fit during the Golden Age of Hollywood, where it's set. Of course, it would have been rare for a film of that age to end with the couple splitting up. Just as it is to see a movie in which the usual gender roles are reversed so starkly.

Reeling Backward: "From the Terrace" (1960)

"From the Terrace" is not particularly well remembered, but it's an interesting example of midcentury melodrama. It addresses the topics of marital infidelity and divorce in a bold way you generally didn't see in that era. It casts a gimlet eye on the accepted practice of putting business ahead of love and family.

And it stars husband-and-wife team Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the third of their 10 onscreen appearances together.

Newman plays Alfred Eaton, a young go-getter from a fractured family determined to make his own high place in the world. Woodward plays Mary St. John, the unobtainable daughter of an old-money clan whom he pursues relentlessly and then abandons for his work once they're married.

Though Mary is ostensibly the villain of the piece, it's a much more nuanced portrait of an unraveling marriage, with Alfred bearing an equal share of the responsibility for its descent from joy to neglect to poison. He consciously puts her in a distant second place behind his job, first as co-founder of his own aeronautics company and then as worker drone for a prominent financier.

At first Mary defends Alfred from her friends' taunts about abandoning her. But as time marches on she grows more resentful, insisting that she has a right to socialize while he's away for months at a time -- and emotionally absent even when home. Eventually she reignites an affair with Jim Roper (Patrick O'Neal), the dashing doctor to whom she was engaged before Alfred stole her away.

By the end she's a shrewish harpy gleefully throwing her cheating in her husband's face. Her idea of rapprochement is offering an open marriage where they can each sleep with whomever they want. Woodward is icy and effective in the role, a platinum blonde hairdo offsetting her less-than-angelic demeanor.

It's an atypical performance for Newman, who at this stage of his career usually played earnest young men or charming rascals. Here he's a repressed sort, a guy who secretly craves the affection he never got from his parents. It's essentially a portrait of a hero who falls onto the wrong path. He quickly realizes his mistake, but rather than correct it he's determined to carry through no matter what.

He ends up as rather a grim figure, hectored on the job by Old Man MacHardie (Felix Aylmer) and harried at home by Mary. Indeed, the film's middle section can be rather hard to get through, and at just shy of 2½ hours the movie is much longer than it needs to be. It was written and directed by Mark Robson ("Champion," "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness"), based on the novel by John O'Hara.

Some of the best stuff is at the beginning, when Alfred returns home from World War II. His father is a nouveau riche owner of a Pennsylvania steel mill. Terrifically played by Leon Ames, Samuel Eaton is an old-school tyrant who emotionally checked out of the family a dozen years earlier when his older son died of cystic fibrosis. The great Myrna Loy plays the mother, who's turned to drink and the arms of another man for comfort. One of her favorite habits is to board a train to anywhere and drink herself into a stupor.

Expecting a hero's welcome, Alfred returns to a lost mother and a father who's openly hostile to his presence. He rejects dad's assumption that he'll follow into the family business, instead opting to establish a private plane manufacturing company with Lex Porter, an old-money pal (a superbly WASP-y George Grizzard).

Samuel tries to warn his son that unless he puts up half the seed money himself, Alfred will always be treated as the lesser partner -- a prediction that turns out exactly so. It's his way of offering the dough himself, but there's too much pride and resentment between them for the message to get through. The elder Eaton is too used to keeping the younger in his place.

"You're not big enough to even walk in my shadow. And you never will be!" he thunders.

Perhaps the film's most pivotal scene takes place when father Eaton tries to explain to Alfred why he's been so uncaring toward him. It's a soul in pain reaching out, trying to make amends. But he loses himself in a quagmire of regret over his lost boy, which Alfred interprets as another brick in the wall of shunning him. Dad suffers a heart attack and dies soon after.

Of course, the lesson is that Alfred's father only cared about wealth and status, and it brought him to a low end. But the son can't see it, and like so many sons with chips on their shoulders, unwittingly starts down the same path himself.

The film picks up again in the third act with the introduction of the character of Natalie Benzinger, the daughter of a mine owner who comes to represent for Alfred all the opportunities he eschewed for a life of warmth and family. They begin a tentative affair while he's assessing the mine for purchase by MacHardie.

At first Natalie rejects his overtures because he's married, but comes to recognize the streak of nobility and empathy under Alfred's hard, crusty exterior. She's played by Ina Balin, who received a Golden Globe nomination for her resonant performance.

There are too many twists and turns of the plot in "From the Terrace" -- including the machinations of MacHardie's son-in-law, Creighton Duffy (Howard Caine), whose business affairs are tied up with Alfred's old buddy Lex. He tries to blackmail Alfred with evidence of his affair with Natalie.

It's a classic example of filmmakers adapting a novel and failing to pare down the characters and narrative to the beating heart of the tale. But there's still a vibrant pulse in this film, an odd mix of dourness and elation that subtly encourages us to seek our own bliss.

Reeling Backward: "King Rat" (1965)

"King Rat" is very different from your typical prisoner of war movie. It's not about grand escape attempts or antagonism with their captors -- indeed, the Japanese do not even show up until more than 30 minutes in, and only appear briefly a few more times.

Although its main character is a flimflam man who unofficially rules the camp through his scheming and black market deals -- much like William Holden in "Stalag 17" 12 years earlier -- it's not really about that, either. Rather, it's a deep and probing look at the relationship between two very different men, and how the travails of imprisonment push them to form inseparable bonds ... or not.

Corporal King (George Segal) is the ruler of the roost, despite having one of the lowest ranks in the POW camp. He has a senior sergeant (Patrick O'Neal) as his personal lackey, and gives impertinent answers to any query by an officer into his doings. Peter Marlowe (James Fox) is a terminally stiff-upper-lip British lieutenant who speaks the local dialect, and is recruited by King as his interpreter and right-hand man.

At first Marlowe is mortally insulted at King's offers to pay him for his services, insisting that's not how an English gentleman conducts himself. He helps King, but only out of a sense of friendship -- though he does accept food, favors and later a little cash for his efforts. It's a delicious exploration of the differences between American and British culture, with the latter considering it humiliating to be seen striving too much.

King, meanwhile, is an enterprising soul. Indeed, capitalism seems to be the only thing residing in his nature. Everything to him is a contest, a game of one-upmanship, a quest for profit.

The sale of a Rolex watch from an older British officer to one of the prison guards is instructive. The officer wants at least $1,200, knowing the watch is worth 3,500. King, acting as the middleman with Marlowe translating, talks the guard up from 400 to 2,200. But he tells the officer he only got 900, leaving him with 810 after King's 10% commission.

He then gives Marlowe his cut of $108, who doesn't want to take it, seeing it as a form of theft. But King fills him in. The guard will quickly resell the watch at a handsome profit, so he's happy. The watch was actually a fake, so the officer thought he was fooling both King and the guard, so he's happy. King duped them both and, being the smartest, took the lion's share of the stake. Reluctantly, Marlowe claims his share.

In this sense, "King Rat" is less about a con man than how that man relates to others in horrible circumstances.

The thing that really stood out for me about "King Rat" was how well writer/director Bryan Forbes, adapting the book by James Clavell, depicted the plight of the prisoners of the Changi prison camp near Singapore -- mostly Brits and Aussies but a few Yanks, too. Either they exclusively hired actors and extras who were extraordinarily skinny, or the cast members were deprived of food to get just the right look.

Remember when Christian Bale famous starved himself for "The Machinist?" That's what most of the men we see are like -- hollowed-out chests, sunken cheeks, toothpick arms and legs, stark rib cages. They're filthy, wear scraps of rags that used to be their uniforms, and have open sores or wounds.

Food is the number one concern of their daily existence. Each man exists on a quarter-pound of rice per day, and dysentery and other disease are rampant.

Forbes makes the audience really feel their hunger. The only other movie I can think of that even comes close to projecting the same level of desperation is "Empire of the Sun."  I think of the way all the animation goes out of the men's faces when a tasty morsel is shown in their presence. They practically turn into slavering dogs.

Speaking of dog: perhaps the most pivotal scene in the movie is when King cooks a stew of dog meat for his closest chums, i.e., the people who work for him as various henchmen in his nefarious activities. The dog was the pet of one of their fellow prisoners, who was ordered to put it down when it killed one of the camp's valuable egg-laying hens. King "acquired" the carcass, but makes a point of not telling his guests it's dog until he's dishing out plates and they're literally slobbering at the smell.

This sets off a brief but not terribly enthusiastic debate about the ethics of eating a friend's beloved pet. The men are just looking for King to give them an excuse to indulge. They want him to convince them it's silly to waste the flesh when people (but not them) are starving: "Meat's meat," he says, with characteristic bluntness. They happily give in to his urging, and we get the sense the entire endeavor was about King testing their loyalty.

King's other significant protein enterprise is with rat, giving the book and film its name. They get their hands on a male and female rat and begin breeding them -- with the unwitting help of a British officer and zoologist, whom they bribe to tell them all about the gestational periods and eating habits of vermin. Once their rat operation is big enough, they start selling off the meat, passing it off as mouse deer, a local delicacy enjoyed by the natives.

Two notable things about the rat meat business: they only sell to high-ranking officers, "majors and above." Even King has his principles, and feeding rat to his fellow enlisted men and junior officers just seems wrong (and risky). Also, they only cut off the hind legs at first, so the animals can continue living ... and making more little rats.

King differs from the other prisoners in keeping an appearance virtually unchanged from what you'd see of soldiers on their home base: crisp clean uniform, neatly trimmed and combed hair, fresh shave and manicure. Though Segal is slim as an adolescent boy, he seems well-fed by the standards of the prison.

He struts around the camp like a peacock, drawing the stares and resentment of the half-dead, bedraggled creatures around him. He also provokes the ire of Grey (Tom Courtenay), the provost-marshal, aka chief law enforcement officer in the camp. A snide protector of the old world order, Grey is incensed at seeing an upstart American running roughshod over the rules -- and enlisting British officers into his criminal web.

Justice is harsh and quick at Changi prison, and stealing food is seen as the worst possible crime. Early on, when one of the bags of rice comes up a couple of pounds short, the suspected (though never proven) culprit winds up face-first in a borehole. The prisoners use these to collect cockroaches and other bugs for protein -- and also as a way to execute offenders in a dark and cruel manner.

The film concludes on a note that is simultaneously joyous and depressing. Marlowe's arm is injured and turns gangrenous, precipitating the need for an amputation. King sticks his neck way out to obtain the medicine necessary to save his life and the arm. Marlowe returns the gift with his unwavering loyalty.

But one day out of the blue, the Japanese commander announces that his country has surrendered, and the war is over. Soon after a lone British soldier (Richard Dawson!) walks up and disarms the guards, officially ending the prisoners' captivity.

After a period of shock, the POWs go into a wild jubilation at the end of the war, but King retreats away from his criminal activities and his friendship with Marlowe. He knows the real world is about to reassert itself, and he'll go back to being a lowly corporal on the make. He abruptly snubs his British mate, calling him "sir" like it's a vile insult.

As he rides away from the camp with the other American soldiers, I think King really did feel a sense of affection for Marlowe. But he's also a hardcore pragmatist, and he knows that clinging to a false sense of equivalency will only lead to disappointment.

This is a strange and beautiful film -- it earned Oscar nominations for black-and-white cinematography and art direction/set decoration -- and a coldly compelling one. Its harsh and authentic depiction of POW life, and its total lack of sentimentality in its main character, are unique among other World War II movies.

"King Rat" hasn't maintained much of a reputation as the years have raced on. But I deem it a forgotten minor masterpiece.