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Review by Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine ★★★★ Liked

Action! - Lumet/Pollack: The Fight of the Century

A quirky, at times odd, exhilarating, and really entertaining picture about a psychiatrist in a clinic and a detective who race to stop a lady who is attempting to commit suicide. That is how we are introduced to our next director, Sydney Pollack.

Portier is fantastic. The actor's fervor is contagious throughout the film. In many ways, he reminded me of Denzel Washington, where even though the whole scenario is quite dramatic, there is something almost intrinsically funny about the way he responds to many of the circumstances. That ending got me laughing. Bancroft does a good job, despite the fact that most of his work consists of her moaning on the…

Review by theo ★★½

sidney poitier laughing hysterically cured my depression

Review by Melina ★★★★★ Liked

how ironic that Anne Bancroft wanted to die in this movie when I would die for her

Review by Brian Formo ★★★ Liked

A great example of Hollywood's squaredom in the 60s that made them miss the entire 60s counter-culture movement before handing over the keys to foreign filmmakers and youth in the fuck-it gesture of 1970s New Hollywood. Although this suicide hotline thriller is nowhere near as sexist as the tagline about "a woman's emotions" being so unpredictable you should "expect anything" the whole concept is oddly classical, like the Greatest Generation pleading with youth of today that it gets better. (Anne Bancroft is an "old 30" which is quite a shocking ission for the woman who will be Mrs. Robinson just two years later).

Thankfully, it's the youthful touch of director Sydney Pollack, in his feature film directorial debut, who films…

Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★½ Liked

The looks that Alan gives Mark towards the end, the monologue Alan gives about watching the walls closing in on him. What a performance. RIP Sidney Poitier and thank you for all the lovely work you did.

And Quincy Jones… what a score as usual

5

“Wouldn’t that be funny? If I ended a sentence with a preposition and didn’t have time to correct myself?”

For someone who only directed 21 films, Sydney Pollack has an insanely diverse body of work. If you were to judge solely by this debut, audiences at the time probably thought they had a type of New Hollywood Hitchcock on their hands. The Slender Thread is unyieldingly tense, polished, and stylistically sure of itself, in a way that most directorial debuts can only aspire to be. Which is why it’s surprising to me that Pollack went on to release something so dissimilar as the sweltering Depression-era romance This Property is Condemned only a year later, with the only connecting thread being the instability…

1

Now wait a minute, I may not be the most savvy individual when it comes to suicide hotline cases, but why the hell does Sidney Poitier’s character says to Anne Bancroft’s character “I hope you do die” when she is in clear need of help? As far as I can tell, this film is the worst suicide case depicted! 

The Slender Thread is Sydney Pollack’s directorial debut, and it’s a mix-bag. On one hand, it demonstrates early on Pollack’s ability to direct and create tension; on the other, the screenplay, written by Stirling Silliphant, with an uncredited contribution by David Rayfiel, is poorly done, ridden with dialogue that is way too dramatic. 

The best thing about this film is Sydney…

Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★½ Liked

Essentially Trigger Warning: The Movie, this is a film about a hapless grad student who's in charge of the 60s equivalent of the Crisis Hotline, and gets a call from Anne Bancroft, a woman who's on the brink of taking her life for reasons that will become clear in extensive flashbacks/conversations with Poitier that aren't so much cat-and-mouse as him frantically trying to get her to a) tell him where she is so he can send help and b) find a reason to stick around.

For some people, that's probably a no-go, but if you aren't put off by the subject matter, this is definitely worth a watch. It's got Poitier! Anne Bancroft--at a Disco at one point, even! Telly…

Review by nora ★★★★ Liked

imagine making a debut this good...sydney pollack i wanna talk to u!!! i loved all the architectural highlighting in all the flashback sequences, and that scene at the discotheque is so intense. also sidney poitier and anne bancroft are INCREDIBLE but honestly is anyone surprised? and quincy jones's jazz score adds so much to the atmosphere.

(8/10 from 1965)

9

I have to thank @Erik (Auk) for his review, or I would never have known this film existed. Which is odd since I'm such a huge fan of everyone involved. Talk about a lost treasure!

Sidney Poitier had just won his Oscar when he made this at 38. Anne Brancroft had won her Oscar 3 years prior and was 34 for this film...which is shocking because she looks so much older than Poitier. To be honest, she always had an older gravitas to her. Who among us would think that she played Mrs. Robinson at 36 when Dustin Hoffman was 30?

I digress. What's even more staggering is that with this cast, Sydney Pollack was to make his film directing…

4

The Slender Thread is about a crisis call center operator who gets a call one night from a woman trying to commit suicide - a simple premise but executed here in a very compelling manner. Just reading the short description on Letterboxd and seeing who was involved with this film made me interested in it right away. This is director Sydney Pollack's directorial debut, and while there looks to be some dodgy looking films later in his filmography, Pollack has yet to disappoint me. I've seen Three Days of the Condor and also given my highest star rating to both of those movies, so needless to say I really enjoy his films and The…

Review by phoebe 💫 ★★★★ Liked

the casting on this is like if someone put all my favourite 1960s actors on a wheel and spun it twice. anne bancroft's voice is sooooooooo perfect and sidney poitier's acting is just magnificent, I honestly can't think of two actors I'd rather see in a movie together and they don't even share a scene.
the slender thread takes place in world in which everyone is genuinely goodhearted and every public servant does their job to the best of their abilities with no ulterior motives, where a single human life is worth infinite amounts of effort from everyone who can help them. there's something so comforting about watching people try their best to help each other -- it feels alien to our understanding of the world but it's presented more or less as what society could look like if a human life was understood to be everyone's top priority. honestly very middlemarch, very lovely