My girlfriend in college took me to see this in the fall of 1973. I thought it was pretty good and she loved it. There was a lot of hype over this movie that lasted through the holiday season. Streisand and Redford were at the top of their game and the radio was playing the theme song incessantly. The other day, my wife put this on tv and I sat down to watch it with her. The direction by Sydney Pollack, the cinematography, set decorations, and costumes are still top notch. Really an attractive looking film. But, almost 50 years later, I feel that the performances of the leads just do not stand the test of time. This was no doubt a vanity piece for Streisand at the time, but now her acting just seems a little high-handed and hammy. Redford looks like he's bored with the entire affair. Any chemistry between their two characters just seems sort of forced. I read during the intervening years that many excellent scenes with talented actors Viveca Lindford and Bradford Dillman were edited out of the final release, which is a shame. Their characters were somewhat intriguing. That being said, it is glaringly apparent that Dillman was edited during the famous sailboat scene with Redford towards the end. At one point, Dillman's character laughs, and you don't even know what he's laughing at. Pollack claims that the editing was done to crank up the romance story as opposed to the Hollywood blacklist plot line. But severe editing was done on the great Anne Francis in Streisand's "Funny Girl" in order to make sure no one upstaged Streisand. Was the same thing being done here again for both Streisand and Redford ? In any event, this is a watchable movie, but in no way is it a timeless romance or drama, and if you want to see Streisand and Redford give some really good performances, look elsewhere.
Review of The Way We Were
