"Memories, Like the corners of my mind Misty water-coloured memories Of the way we were".
When I recently sat down to watch "The Way We Were" for the second time (the first having been over ten years ago) I realised that Marvin Hamlisch's famous theme song was about the only thing I could remember about it. Of the film itself I only had misty water-coloured memories of a campus romance between a handsome, blond upper-class WASP boy and a working class girl, a sort of remake of "Love Story" except for the fact that the girl, who is Jewish rather than Italian Catholic (and a lot less attractive than Ali McGraw), doesn't die at the end. The scriptwriter Arthur Laurents in fact wrote the leading male role with Ryan O'Neal, the star of "Love Story", in mind.
The film opens in the late 1930s when Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner first meet at university. The two do not seem to have much in common. She is a working-class Jewish Marxist and president of the college branch of the Young Communist League, whereas he is from a wealthy upper-class WASP background. (At least, everyone seems to assume that Hubbell is a WASP, although his Protestantism is never actually mentioned in the film. He could equally well be a White Anglo-Saxon Catholic or White Anglo-Saxon Atheist, but WASC and WASA do not work so well as acronyms). This, however, seems to be one case where opposites attract, and Hubbell and Katie fall in love. They are temporarily separated, but meet again after the war and marry. The film then follows the subsequent history of their marriage.
Perhaps the reason so little about the film remains in the memory is because it is a misty water-coloured movie. By that I am not referring to its visual style; the photography is crisp and well-defined. There is, however, something vague and insubstantial about the plot. It doesn't help that both the leads are so unsympathetic. Hubbell is good- looking and charming, but shallow and superficial, unwilling to work hard at anything. When we first meet him he has ambitions to become a writer, and clearly has talent in that direction, but after publishing his first novel never has much success, preferring to work for easy money producing scripts for Hollywood and television.
As for Katie, I find it very hard to sympathise with a strident and unapologetic defender of Stalin's regime, even though Laurents obviously intended us to find her sympathetic, politics and all. One of the causes of the growing estrangement between her and Hubbell is his dismissal of her political activism, but this is one area where I felt he showed more sense than she did. The film deals with McCarthyism, but in a classical piece of solipsism fails to acknowledge that the concerns of the House Un-American Activities Committee went much further than a few blacklisted Hollywood directors and screenwriters or that the great majority of McCarthy's victims had absolutely no connection with the motion picture industry. Nor does it explore the irony of Communists like Katie invoking the protection of the American Constitution they were sworn to destroy or ask why, if they were so concerned with freedom of speech, they did not demonstrate outside the Soviet embassy demanding that Stalin extend to his own subjects the freedoms they were claiming for themselves.
Another problem with the film is that too much is taken for granted and not enough explained. It purports to be a study of a marriage, but important events in the story of that marriage are rather glossed over, such as Hubbell's affair with the ex-wife of a friend. The final scene shows Hubbell and Katie meeting again in the sixties, and it is clear that they are now divorced (and Katie re-married), but the actual divorce and what led up to it are never shown. We are left to conclude that the differences in their background and temperament have made it impossible for them to live together. (To be fair to Laurents, his original screenplay was very much altered to meet the studio's demands and various other writers were brought in to contribute, which possibly explains the plot's lack of coherence).
Robert Redford's rather laid-back style of acting made him a natural choice for a laid-back character like Hubbell. Casting directors from this period often liked to pair Redford with a more intensely dramatic leading lady to emphasise the contrast between their characters. Sydney Pollack, who directs here, had already done this by casting Redford opposite Natalie Wood in "This Property Is Condemned", as had Gene Saks (less successfully) with Jane Fonda in "Barefoot in the Park". (Pollock was later to make the Redford/Fonda pairing work more effectively in "The Electric Horseman"). Certainly Barbra Streisand is at her most intense here, but she is faced with the impossible task of trying to make a Stalinist harridan into a likable human being, and we never really care about what happens to her character.
On the positive side, Hamlisch's romantic and poetic musical score is a very fine one and Streisand gives a marvellous rendition of That Song. 6/10. (5/10 for the film itself, with a bonus point for the music; Hamlisch deservedly won Academy Awards for "Best Original Dramatic Score" and "Best Original Song").
When I recently sat down to watch "The Way We Were" for the second time (the first having been over ten years ago) I realised that Marvin Hamlisch's famous theme song was about the only thing I could remember about it. Of the film itself I only had misty water-coloured memories of a campus romance between a handsome, blond upper-class WASP boy and a working class girl, a sort of remake of "Love Story" except for the fact that the girl, who is Jewish rather than Italian Catholic (and a lot less attractive than Ali McGraw), doesn't die at the end. The scriptwriter Arthur Laurents in fact wrote the leading male role with Ryan O'Neal, the star of "Love Story", in mind.
The film opens in the late 1930s when Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner first meet at university. The two do not seem to have much in common. She is a working-class Jewish Marxist and president of the college branch of the Young Communist League, whereas he is from a wealthy upper-class WASP background. (At least, everyone seems to assume that Hubbell is a WASP, although his Protestantism is never actually mentioned in the film. He could equally well be a White Anglo-Saxon Catholic or White Anglo-Saxon Atheist, but WASC and WASA do not work so well as acronyms). This, however, seems to be one case where opposites attract, and Hubbell and Katie fall in love. They are temporarily separated, but meet again after the war and marry. The film then follows the subsequent history of their marriage.
Perhaps the reason so little about the film remains in the memory is because it is a misty water-coloured movie. By that I am not referring to its visual style; the photography is crisp and well-defined. There is, however, something vague and insubstantial about the plot. It doesn't help that both the leads are so unsympathetic. Hubbell is good- looking and charming, but shallow and superficial, unwilling to work hard at anything. When we first meet him he has ambitions to become a writer, and clearly has talent in that direction, but after publishing his first novel never has much success, preferring to work for easy money producing scripts for Hollywood and television.
As for Katie, I find it very hard to sympathise with a strident and unapologetic defender of Stalin's regime, even though Laurents obviously intended us to find her sympathetic, politics and all. One of the causes of the growing estrangement between her and Hubbell is his dismissal of her political activism, but this is one area where I felt he showed more sense than she did. The film deals with McCarthyism, but in a classical piece of solipsism fails to acknowledge that the concerns of the House Un-American Activities Committee went much further than a few blacklisted Hollywood directors and screenwriters or that the great majority of McCarthy's victims had absolutely no connection with the motion picture industry. Nor does it explore the irony of Communists like Katie invoking the protection of the American Constitution they were sworn to destroy or ask why, if they were so concerned with freedom of speech, they did not demonstrate outside the Soviet embassy demanding that Stalin extend to his own subjects the freedoms they were claiming for themselves.
Another problem with the film is that too much is taken for granted and not enough explained. It purports to be a study of a marriage, but important events in the story of that marriage are rather glossed over, such as Hubbell's affair with the ex-wife of a friend. The final scene shows Hubbell and Katie meeting again in the sixties, and it is clear that they are now divorced (and Katie re-married), but the actual divorce and what led up to it are never shown. We are left to conclude that the differences in their background and temperament have made it impossible for them to live together. (To be fair to Laurents, his original screenplay was very much altered to meet the studio's demands and various other writers were brought in to contribute, which possibly explains the plot's lack of coherence).
Robert Redford's rather laid-back style of acting made him a natural choice for a laid-back character like Hubbell. Casting directors from this period often liked to pair Redford with a more intensely dramatic leading lady to emphasise the contrast between their characters. Sydney Pollack, who directs here, had already done this by casting Redford opposite Natalie Wood in "This Property Is Condemned", as had Gene Saks (less successfully) with Jane Fonda in "Barefoot in the Park". (Pollock was later to make the Redford/Fonda pairing work more effectively in "The Electric Horseman"). Certainly Barbra Streisand is at her most intense here, but she is faced with the impossible task of trying to make a Stalinist harridan into a likable human being, and we never really care about what happens to her character.
On the positive side, Hamlisch's romantic and poetic musical score is a very fine one and Streisand gives a marvellous rendition of That Song. 6/10. (5/10 for the film itself, with a bonus point for the music; Hamlisch deservedly won Academy Awards for "Best Original Dramatic Score" and "Best Original Song").