The published version:
Three decades of the 'Condor'
May 12, 2006
THERE IS nothing unusual about Hollywood's reluctance to make movies about unpopular or controversial wars, which may explain why ''United 93" is, as Jeff Jacoby puts it in his May 10 op-ed, ''inexcusably late."
If ''United 93" is to be celebrated as what Jacoby calls ''Hollywood's first serious contribution to the war effort," let us then praise Sydney Pollack's ''Three Days of the Condor" as the first serious warning of another ''war effort." In that movie, a low-level CIA researcher who calls himself ''Condor," played by Robert Redford, learns of a plot within the CIA to begin a war in the Middle East in order to protect American oil interests.
In the final scene, when Condor says he has leaked the CIA war plot to The New York Times, a deputy director of the agency warns him that the Times won't publish Condor's story because the American public doesn't want to know what it takes to keep their homes warm, their cars running.
While ''Three Days of the Condor" was in theaters in 1975, President Ford appointed a former oilman from Texas to head the CIA: George Herbert Walker Bush.
The rest, as they say, is history.
JULIAN SMITH
Durham, N.H.
The writer is professor emeritus of film studies at the University of Florida.
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And the original:
"Three Decades of the Condor"
In his May 10th column, Jeff Jacoby complains that it "should not have taken almost five years" for Hollywood to produce 'United 93'", which he calls "a stark and heart-breaking re-creation" of events on the morning of 9/11.
There is nothing unusual about Hollywood's reluctance to make movies about unpopular or controversial wars, which may explain why "United 93" is, as Jacoby puts it, "inexcusably late".
As I pointed out many years ago in "Looking Away: Hollywood and Vietnam" (Scribners, 1975), only one major American movie about our Southeast Asian adventure was made before we finally bailed out in 1973: John Wayne's "The Green Berets". That hawkish movie was released in 1968, the year that public opinion began to turn against the war following the Tet offensive. It would take another decade for films like "Go Tell the Spartans" (1978) and "Apocalypse Now" (1979) to move Vietnam from TV news to the big screen.
If "United 93" is to be celebrated as what Jacoby calls "Hollywood's first serious contribution to the war effort", let us then praise Sydney Pollack's "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) as the first serious contribution to the effort to warn us of another "war effort": the effort to get us into war in the
Middle East.
In that movie, "Condor", a low-level CIA researcher played by Robert Redford, learns of a plot within the CIA to begin a war in the Middle East in order to protect American oil interests. At several points, ominous low-angle shots of the new World Trade Center towers are used to establish the location of the CIA offices in Manhattan. In the final scene, when Condor
announces that he has leaked the CIA war plot to the New York Times, a deputy director of the agency warns him that the Times won't publish Condor's story because the American public doesn't want to know what it takes to keep their homes warm, their cars running.
While "Three Days of the Condor" was playing in theaters around the country late in 1975, President Ford appointed a former oilman from Texas to head the CIA: George Herbert Walker Bush. The rest, as they say, is history.