I‘m not going to eulogize Sydney Pollack, not just yet. So if you don’t mind, I’ll skip the thumbnail biography and the critical filmography right now. I just want to look at his picture and think about him a little longer. I guess my uncharacteristic reticence is partly because I feel a little intimidated and under qualified for the job… but it’s mostly because I want to relish the sweet, sweet denial that he’s really gone.

I didn’t know Sydney Pollack, never met him, never so much as walked by him on the street, but I’ve felt close to the man ever since I was 12 or 13 years old and stayed up late one night to watch the strangest soldier movie I’d ever seen… Castle Keep (1969). A box office flop at the time of its release but
once a late night TV staple, the film has lapsed unjustly into obscurity. Exhibited abroad in 70mm, Castle Keep was dumped onto DVD a year or so ago in a cropped standard frame presentation, tantamount to the studio telling fans of the film to read the book instead. When the movie’s defenders got vocal, Sydney Pollack stepped into the breach and a proper widescreen DVD followed.  Again, I didn’t know Sydney Pollack but this story seems characteristic of a guy who wasn’t afraid to get in the middle of it. Now that it’s looking good again and readily available (drop it
into your Netflix queue), I urge you to take a look: Burt Lancaster, Peter Falk, Patrick O’Neal, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Bruce Dern, In Cold Blood‘s Scott Wilson, Malcolm X‘s Al Freeman Jr., future director Tony Bill, snow-capped Yugoslavian landscapes, a haunting score by Michele Legrand and the madness of war. Pollack’s career as a feature film director was really just getting under way at the time but Castle Keep was his third collaboration with Lancaster, after The Scalphunters (1968) and his uncredited work on The Swimmer (1968). I don’t know how Pollack got along with the autocratic Lancaster but they made some swell pictures.

Even at my tender pre-teen age, Castle Keep changed me by the power of its strange beauty and sense of the absurd and Sydney Pollack was teaching me about what was important in a movie, about how to balance the big setpieces with small moments that tell you everything about character. The next Pollack film I saw, again on TV, was Three Days of the Condor (1975). As with Castle Keep, this one is chockablock with great actors (among them Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow, Cliff Robertson, John Houseman and Walter McGinn) and I don’t think Robert Redford has ever been better. Yes, he’s has been more romantic (and probably never more so than in the Pollack-directed The Way We Were), funnier, more boyishly handsome but Pollack (who had acted with him in 1962′s War Hunt and first directed him in This Property Is
Condemned in 1965) got his star to reveal the pain behind the pretty face. Redford’s brief scene with Carlin Glynn, where he shows up for a dinner party knowing but unable to acknowledge that her husband/his friend lies dead in an alley, is this quiet but twisty espionage thriller’s most devastating moment.

My third favorite Sydney Pollack film fell between these two chronologically but it took me a few years to catch up with it. The Yakuza (1974) was written by Paul and Leonard Schrader and took place in Japan, where soldier of fortune Robert Mitchum returns to track down the kidnapped daughter of his war time buddy Brian Keith. It’s one of those paranoid thrillers where nobody knows who to trust and where, by the time the mission is accomplished, nothing is the same, friendships are shattered and more than a few pinky fingers are lying by the wayside. It’s a story about honor and nobility in an age where such attributes are considered unprofitable. And, being a Sydney Pollack film, it’s rich in wonderful character actors, among them Ken Takakura, Herb Edelman, James Shigeta and Richard Jordan. The Schraders had pitched the idea as “The Godfather meets Bruce Lee” and thought they’d get $60,000. What the producers eventually paid was $325,000, at the time the highest amount ever shelled out for a spec screenplay. Martin Scorsese had wanted to direct but the producers preferred Pollack, who turned in yet another exquisitely complicated drama born of basic human emotions. 

There are other Sydney Pollack movies I like but these three are my holy trinity. Tootsie (1982) remains a masterclass in American slapstick and it should be taught in film schools for the chowderheads Hollywood is hiring in increasing numbers these days to crank out self-indulgent and unfunny 2-1/2 hour comedies.  It was star Dustin Hoffman who lured his director back to acting after a 20 year retirement and Pollack blew a hole in the screen as Hoffman’s long-suffering agent. (I can’t imagine anyone else delivering a crass line like “Who gives a shit?!” with such a delightful mixture of wit and apoplexy.) After this, Pollack seemed very much in demand to play characters wielding great power (in last year’s Michael Clayton) or tortured by self-doubt (in Woody Allen’s last masterpiece, Husbands and Wives). He also returned to episodic television, where his directing career had started, appearing on episodes of Frasier, Mad About You, Will & Grace and The Sopranos. Sydney Pollack’s last film was the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005) and his last film role was as Patrick Dempsey’s father in Made of Honor (2008). 

Sydney Pollack’s pharmacist father had wanted his son to be a dentist but the boy was drawn to the actor’s life. As a filmmaker, Pollack brought to his profession a meticulous and almost medical precision that never manifested itself in grandstanding setpieces or condescended to homage. Denigrated by latter day cineastes as middlebrow, Pollack had the last laugh by referring to himself as “Mr. Mainstream.” Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel put it best when he referred to Pollack as “a practical dreamer… neither self-aggrandizing or self-important.” He seemed to me both dedicated to and opinionated about his craft but (as with many children of the Depression) primarily grateful for the work.

Sydney Pollack died yesterday in his Pacific Palisades home, surrounded by family and friends. He was 73. And that’s all I’m saying.