Max von Sydow

Three Days of the Condor

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Turner in front a bridge on the Hudson River

The Bourne movies lifted a lot of their MO from Three Days of the Condor, one of the key political conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s. Behind the scenes the way the film was financed – sold before it was even made – would change the way the film industry worked in the 1980s, but Sydney Pollack’s loose shooting style and fast edits intercutting action with depictions of slickly professional characters doing what they do, that looks even further into the future. This is also peak Robert Redford, who plays a desk jockey for some branch of the secret service who goes out to lunch one day and comes back to find that everyone … Read more

Shame

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War planes swing low over the smallholding

Shame is Ingmar Bergman’s war movie. Except, being an Ingmar Bergman movie, it’s really about relationships, a marriage in trouble (probably Bergman’s own – number four was heading for the exit), and something else on top. Kriget (The War) was Bergman’s original title for it, but Skammen (literally, The Shame) is what Bergman settled on. So, not a generalised Shame but a specific instance of it. What that shame might be precisely is what Bergman will eventually reveal, but he starts out by painting a portrait of two former orchestral musicians (wife number four, Käbi Laretei was a concert pianist) who have given it all up to live the good life, growing and selling … Read more