Out of Their Depth: Three Days of the Condor (15)

Robert Redford and director Sydney Pollack had a long and successful collaboration producing several hits in the 1970s such as Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and The Way We Were (1973).

In this film they capture the political anxiety of the time with the Watergate break-ins making constant national headlines (Redford would go onto address Watergate directly in All the President’s Men in 1976). Here he plays Joe Turner, a junior analyst in the C.I.A. scrutinising published texts from around the world for coded messages, who comes back from his lunch break to find his world turned upside down. No longer sure who he can trust he goes in search of answers.

Using a well-established format of the innocent-on-the-run Three Days of the Condor develops into a tense political thriller marinated in 1970s suspicion and corruption. Of the films in the Out of Their Depth season Redford’s persona is most like the traditional Hollywood male lead with all his solution-focused virtue yet here his character is left uncertain about the impact of his actions and the true scale of the conspiracy and corruption he faces.

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Out of Their Depth

Following the cultural upheaval and racial tensions of the 1960s, the early ‘70s saw America increasingly in social and political turmoil as opposition to the Vietnam War grew more violent following revelations of the brutality of American forces whilst at home the full scale of the Watergate scandal was beginning to be revealed. The certainties of modern American values were not only tarnished they were found to be mired in corruption, scandal and lies.

This heightened unease in the mainstream American psyche was reflected in films from the New Hollywood of the period where the traditional male hero of the classic studio era was replaced by a protagonist who, whilst they thought they were in control, found themselves increasingly out of their depth.

This season is curated by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Image: Three Days of The Condor © 1975 Dino De Laurentiis Corporation. All Rights Reserved