ONCE UPON A TIME.. THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR

Protagonists :

• Robert REDFORD, actor and director
• Carl BERNSTEIN, journalist
• Jeff STEIN, journalist, ex-military intelligence officer
• James GRADY, writer, author of the novel “The Six Days of the Condor”
• David RAYFIEL, scriptwriter of the film
• Stephen HUNTER, journalist, film critic
• Bernie POLLACK, Sydney’s brother and costume designer on the film…
• Owen ROIZMAN, cinematographer on the film…

Released in 1975, Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor is one of the first political thrillers produced by Hollywood. Set in the midst of the first oil shock and the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon to resign a few months earlier, the film depicts the hunt of a lowly CIA agent by a powerful group of conspirators inside the intelligence headquarters. The film begins with an anthology scene in which Agent Condor, played by Robert Redford, discovers that all of his office colleagues have been murdered during the lunch hour. Condor will then have to use all his cleverness as a lone man to escape the killers on his heels, before finally disclosing the whole affair to the press.

In this twenty-ninth documentary from the collection “A Film and its Era “, created and produced by Marie Genin and Serge July, director Guillaume Moscovitz went to the United States to meet the main protagonists of the film. From his Californian residence, Robert Redford recounts in detail the adventure of this film, as well as his long friendship with Sydney Pollack – the two men made seven films together – and his strong political involvement in the 1970s. Bernie Pollack, the filmmaker’s brother and costume designer on the film, as well as James Grady, the author of the novel that inspired the film, David Rayfiel, the screenwriter, and Owen Roizman, the cinematographer, provide new and original revelations on the genesis of the Condor and its shooting. While Jeff Stein, a journalist and himself a former member of the secret service, discusses the noxious and paranoid climate that reigned at the time in the United States. Carl Bernstein, the famous Washington Post journalist who, with his colleague Bob Woodward, triggered the whole Watergate affair, describes his fight against the illegal excesses of the American governments and services of that time. He also explains how this premonitory film illustrates the emergence of the “Fourth Estate,” which the press and media will acquire in Western democracies after the Watergate affair.

The documentary film also contains many archival documents showing Sydney Pollack filming Three Days of the Condor, explaining his vision of America, his conception of cinema and his way of working with actors.