Review for Three Days of the Condor

Introduction

I loved spy movies when I was a kid, or at least I told myself I loved spy movies. In actual fact, I enjoyed action fantasies with a level of parody, which is what the spy movie staple aimed at my age group was, movies like James Bond, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Matt Helm, and the Flint movies. In the 21st Century, the spy movie got a reinvention to make them more ‘realistic’ with the advent of the Bourne movies. But really they are just action fantasies shorn of parody. The thing about genuine espionage and actual spies is that you don’t know who they are; you don’t know that it’s happening. Another thing is that intelligence agencies aren’t built on spies and derring-do; they’re built on analysts, researchers, cryptographers, and a whole lot of bureaucracy and politics, hence the term ‘Intelligence’. It turns out that I’ve been missing out on the actual spy movies, in my preference for action fantasies. I can now remedy that deficiency in my entertainment choices beginning with Three Days of the Condor, a spy thriller from 1975 that is more topical and relevant today, than it was when it was initially released.

I was also surprised to learn that Eureka Entertainment’s dual format release of this film is the first time that it is being released on any form of home media in the UK. Almost forty years since the proliferation of VHS recorders in British homes, and even now, there are mainstream, award-winning films such as Three Days of the Condor that are yet to see home video release. It boggles the mind.

Joseph Turner works for the CIA... as a reader. He may have the dashing codename of Condor, but his job is far more prosaic. He and his section team members have to read everything, every book published around the world in every language, in the hope of uncovering some code, some communication hidden in the published text. He may work for the company, but Turner isn’t a company man, bristling at the need for obsessive secrecy, and not at all at ease with authority. But it’s this personality trait that saves his life when he sneaks out of a back exit to get lunch. He returns to a scene of carnage, his entire unit has been slaughtered, which is enough to panic him and set him running.


It should be a simple matter of contacting the CIA and arranging to be brought in, but the man sent to meet him pulls a gun, and Turner’s actions in escaping only increase his superiors’ suspicions, given that he was the sole survivor of his unit. Not knowing who to trust, the only brief respite that Turner can find is with a random woman he accosts at gunpoint outside a shop. But Kathy’s initially reluctant help is enough to put him on the road to figure out what’s happening at the CIA, first by finding out just why his unit was assassinated. For a man on the run from the US’s premier secret service, it turns out that Turner has read all the right books...

Picture

Three Days of the Condor gets a 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p transfer. Once again, I get just what I hope for when it comes to vintage cinema on Blu-ray. It’s a decent, filmic transfer, that has the image stable throughout, given enough restoration to clean up the print, remove any significant print damage and age, but otherwise do as little as possible to the image in terms of post-processing and making it ‘HD Ready’ What you get on this disc looks like film, it’s alive with grain, you get the softness at the edge of the anamorphic frame, but the colours are rich, and consistent, black levels are strong and the detail is excellent. There might be the odd sign of age that just couldn’t be restored away, but the film looks fantastic.

It’s a film from the seventies, set in then contemporary New York, during the winter months, so the palette tends to the autumnal and grey shades with the odd spot of brightness for Christmas festivities. In terms of costumes and production design, the film tends towards the dullness of realism, with only the proliferation of CRT monitors at CIA headquarters, the Hollywood magic of computer technology looking far-fetched (for 1975).

The images in this review have been kindly supplied by Eureka Entertainment.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English, PCM 2.0 Stereo in the same, with optional subtitles. I went with the Surround track, and found it to be suitably front-focussed, reflecting the mono origins of the film. Three Days of the Condor gets a smooth jazz soundtrack which is sparsely used, and the dialogue is clear throughout. The surrounds occasionally come to life for action scenes, or a circling helicopter, but aren’t overly used.

Extras

The disc boots straight to a static menu screen.

On the disc you’ll find the 3:04 trailer for the film in HD.

Of most interest might be the Sheldon Hall featurette, which has him speaking on the film, on Robert Redford, and on Sydney Pollack for 21:53, again in HD.

Finally the longest piece is a testimonial to the director, The Directors: Sydney Pollack, which lasts 59:46 and is SD footage scaled up to 1080i 60Hz. It features interviews with Sydney Pollack and some of the actors that he has worked with, as the documentary makes its way forward through his filmography. It was created in 2003, but the interview with Pollack dates from around 1994-5, while Sabrina was still in production.

Also available in the package is the 32 page booklet, which contains an interesting essay on the film by Michael Brooke, and a fascinating 1994 print interview between John Boorman and Sydney Pollack on directing actors.

It is a decent set of extras, but I do feel we’re missing out. This may be the first ever UK release for the film, but it does get regular releases in the US and Europe, and the French Blu-ray from Studiocanal has an hour long documentary on the CIA, another hour long featurette on Sydney Pollack, a half hour interview with Robert Redford, and an audio commentary from Pollack for the film.

Conclusion

It takes a while to get into the correct mindset to watch a film like Three Days of the Condor, especially when your idea of spy thrillers has been distorted by modern populist entertainment. This film is an action thriller about character, not spectacle, and far from being vacuous entertainment, this is a film that provokes thought, and even offers political debate. When it comes to the film’s politics, it’s even more relevant today, than it was back in 1975, when it was touching on the then hot topics of the Energy Crisis and the betrayal of the people by government and authority following the Watergate scandal. But at its heart, it is a fine thriller in the Hitchcock vein, one man against the world, with increasing paranoia and isolation, not certain whether that paranoia is justified. It’s a film that builds and builds in tension to its unexpected conclusion, and I have to admit that I was glued to the screen for most of its runtime.

It did take me a while to warm to the film though, as it has an understated and low-key feel to it from the beginning. That makes sense given the actual nature of the spy profession. These aren’t people who advertise their career choices. When we meet Joseph Turner, he looks pretty bohemian, making his way to work on a moped, arriving at a Literary Society that only betrays its nature by the level of security on the door (security that would be standard on any building today). The job too seems like any clerical job, analysts working with books, but spending their interactions on small-talk and personal issues; the real nature of Turner’s work only really becoming clear after the roof falls in on his world.


The tension is there right from the beginning, as it’s made obvious that the office and its employees are under observation, but the true ominous intentions of the observers are only made clear when Turner pops out for lunch, and the assassins enter the offices. What the opening twenty minutes does in establishing Turner as a likeable everyman, independent, self-reliant and uncomfortable with authority, all pays off after the assassinations, when he has to go on the run, and it quickly becomes clear that his paymasters at the CIA aren’t to be trusted.

Three Days of the Condor could easily be a simple paranoid chase thriller, but the emotional balance is supplied in the relationship that grows between Turner and Kathy, a woman he opportunistically targets as cover for escaping assumed pursuit, and who he takes hostage at gunpoint, using her home as a sanctuary while he tries to figure out what’s happening to him. Despite the initial shock and antagonism of their encounter, Kathy eventually warms to Turner’s plight, no doubt spurred by an apparent emptiness in her life that Turner picks up on.

Most of the antagonists in the film are only briefly on screen, so lack for character development and detail. That’s with the exception of Turner’s point of contact in the New York CIA, Higgins, who plays his cards close to his chest, and maintains ambiguity about his motives and ambitions right to the end of the film, but makes for a fascinating counterpoint to Turner’s earnest forthrightness. Then there is the contract killer Joubert, who dogs Turner, but is played by Max von Sydow with an astounding degree of humanity and complexity in what would otherwise be a simple villainous role.


Three Days of the Condor is a violent film, but this isn’t the flash and bang of modern spy action movies. These are violent acts that you’d actually expect from the spy business, clean up squads sent in to erase evidence of killings, or when that isn’t possible, back alley altercations reported as muggings. The violence in this film might be brutal, and bloody, but it’s also secretive, and furtive. You might also think that the film has dated. Certainly with its rotary dial phones, and transistorised, gargantuan telephone exchanges, it is very much an analogue film trying to impress in our digital age. But by its very analogue nature, it manages to present its story without any obvious plot holes. This is a film that hangs together very tightly, and is one reason why it holds the attention so well. And then we come to the final scene, on the steps of the New York Post, where all of a sudden the film reveals just how relevant it is to our age. When you think of the events of the last few years in the world, regarding geo-politics and the business of national intelligence, Three Days of the Condor resonates very strongly.

Eureka’s presentation of the film is excellent, and the extras on the disc compliment it well. Although having seen the French disc’s specifications, I can’t help but feel that there’s room for improvement in the extras department. Still, for a film that’s never been released before in the UK, this is a very nice debut indeed.