Day for Night Magazine

Life Into Art

The Legacy of Sydney Pollack
By Stephen Rettger

It is rare that a performer in Hollywood is able to move successfully between varied roles throughout the course of an entire career. Even rarer is the one who can do so with mastery. When Sydney Pollack died in May of 2008, he left behind an impressive body of work as a director, actor, and producer.
Pollack began his career in television acting before making his directorial debut with his 1965 Slender Thread. Over the next four decades, he would act as the guiding hand behind such classics as They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, They Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie, and Out of Africa, for which he received an Oscar for Best Director. In the mid-1970s, Pollack began to produce many of his own films and what would become an eclectic mix of projects by other directors, including Michael Clayton and Sense and Sensibility. Between his directing and producing efforts, the films associated with Pollack received forty-eight Oscar nominations.

Pollack returned to acting with Tootsie in 1982, and began a continuous stream of character parts, which—like his producing—kept him working in both television and feature films. The scope of his work over three decades was highlighted by his sudden death from cancer the day after HBO broadcast the made-for-TV Recount, for which he served as executive producer, and while his final acting role Made of Honor was still in theatres.
Despite Pollack’s tendency to take on a multitude of duties in filmmaking, apotheosized in those projects such as Tootsie and Random Hearts, which he directed, produced, and acted in, he always avoided projecting any egos. Unlike Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane or Barbara Streisand’s Yentl, his films never became The Sydney Pollack Show. Rather, he remained in parts that, like an extension of his behind-the-scene responsibilities, touched on the periphery of the protagonist’s journeys through providing opinionated guidance. This unique position, at once involved and removed, allowed Pollack’s work to become commentary on the world of the artist.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) and Tootsie (1982) provided Pollack with his two non-winning Oscar nominations for Best Director. At first glance, the two films seem to be quite different. They Shoot Horses is a gritty drama set in a Great Depression dance marathon, as hardship pushes contestants to the limits of desperation. Tootsie is a comedy about an unemployable actor who pretends to be a middle-aged woman in order to achieve soap opera stardom. Yet at the core, the films are two sides of the same coin: an examination of what performers will endure in desperate attempts to eke out success while running the risk of ruin. Despite the seemingly disparate tones of these two films, it’s remarkable how much similar ground they cover through their respective outlooks and journeys. Perhaps, they are ultimately the same story of what the struggle for success entails, and the consequences it brings upon the performers seeking success.

For Dustin Hoffman’s Michael and Jane Fonda’s Gloria, desperation is the drive pushing them into the performances that serve as the focus of their films. Hoffman’s decision to transform himself into the matronly Dorothy when no one will hire him as Michael mirrors Fonda’s choice to face the rigors of a dance marathon when the Great Depression leaves few options; these snap judgments hint at the desperation behind the characters’ actions. Pollack prefaces each character’s leap into his or her role with a mere moment of preparation that cuts to the heat of the action, highlighting the similarity between the two films and their characters who are swept along almost beyond control.

External forces are also essential to the manner in which these characters seek success. Both Hoffman’s and Fonda’s characters struggle with relating to audiences, and it is this constant longing for approval that creates the performative core of their journeys. However, a significant difference between these two films emerges in their respective treatments of the struggle as entertainment. While the ostensible goal of the dance marathon is to be the last person standing, the real aim is to engage the audience through the performers’ struggles. Thus, the emcee increasingly manipulates the contestants through the course of the contest, raising stakes and pushing the contestants to their limits, justifying his actions by saying that the audience may “want to see a little misery out there so they can feel a little better, maybe.” As the dancer, a necessary aspect of Fonda’s performance is being caught in machinations outside her control.

Hoffman’s character, however, draws on the audience as the means by which he shapes the course of his own performance. As Dorothy the soap actress, Hoffman depends upon the audience’s continued interest to keep performing. Rather than aiming to win audiences with his pain, Hoffman connects to them by shaping Dorothy to present a portrait of a strong woman succeeding. Hoffman’s Dorothy takes command of her storylines and, in fitting with the more optimistic perspective of the film, Hoffman’s Michael uses this projected self-worth to attain some control in his struggle.

What one finds in these films is the idea that a life built on performance is difficult, destructive, and eventually untenable. Art-as-life cannot last long. How, then, does this dilemma apply to a life like Pollack’s, filled with art until the end? Perhaps an answer can be found in the film for which he was awarded his sole Oscar for Best Director, Out of Africa (1985). Presenting a world in which storytelling has both utility and a cultural grounding, Out of Africa is the true story of Danish baroness Karen Blixen, played by Meryl Streep, who moves to Kenya to oversee a plantation with her husband, only to fall in love with the continent and Robert Redford’s adventurer

In a crisis moment in the movie, Blixen’s need to marry forces a quick decision to move to Kenya. Pollack continues to utilize sudden visual leaps of action— Streep is one minute in Denmark, the next in Kenya. In these unfamiliar surroundings, she builds her first social connections through stories she tells. Though she and Redford begin as strangers, her stories offer a piece of herself. Storytelling remains a constant thread in their relationship as it grows from friendship into love

Storytelling embodies more than personal values. As she comes to care about the indigenous people who work on the plantation, Streep tries to facilitate their education through teaching them how to read and write. When the elderly chief opposes the idea as European intervention, Streep tries to convince him of its value as a means of preserving memories, including memories of him once he is gone. He replies that they do not need writing; his tradition is of oral storytelling. As her love and concern for the continent and its people grows, the shared valuation of storytelling underscores her sense of belonging she has established in these surroundings.

Finally, the theme of storytelling applies to the film’s structure as well. Based on Blixen’s writings, the film is framed in her reminiscences. The elderly Blixen’s tales of Africa bookend the film and underscore key moments. This serves to heighten our awareness that this film, in which storytelling has so much power, is itself a story. Accordingly, the value of storytelling suggests an answer to the dilemma of a creative life. Rather than letting the act of performance become life, instead what is offered is the possibility to use life to inform the performance. Sydney Pollack’s focus was not to create overwhelming products to elevate his stature; instead, his legacy rests in his films and their connection with the audience, films which are grounded in a palpable humanity.