Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Director:

Sydney Pollack

Writers:

James Grady (novel)
Lorenzo Semple Jr. (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

14 November 1975 (Finland)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

His CIA code name is Condor. In the next seventy-two hours almost everyone he trusts will try to kill him.

Plot:

A bookish CIA researcher finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.

Plot Keywords:

CIA | Book | Kill | Key | Bird In Title

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 5 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Robert Redford	...	Joseph Turner / The Condor
Faye Dunaway	...	Kathy Hale
Cliff Robertson	...	J. Higgins
Max von Sydow	...	G. Joubert (as Max Von Sydow)
John Houseman	...	Mr. Wabash
Addison Powell	...	Leonard Atwood
Walter McGinn	...	Sam Barber
Tina Chen	...	Janice Chon
Michael Kane	...	S.W. Wicks
Don McHenry	...	Dr. Ferdinand Lappe
Michael B. Miller	...	Fowler (as Michael Miller)
Jess Osuna	...	The Major
Dino Narizzano	...	Harold
Helen Stenborg	...	Mrs. Edwina Russell (as Helen Stenbure)
Patrick Gorman	...	Martin

Also Known As:

3 Days of the Condor (Australia)

Runtime:

117 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:AA (1975) | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 (1976) | Sweden:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16 | Netherlands:12

Filming Locations:

1 World Trade Center, World Trade Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Dino De Laurentiis Company

Trivia:

Former CIA director Richard Helms acted as a personal consultant to Robert Redford for his role as The Condor.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: As Condor opens the desk drawer of the dead receptionist to grab the gun, the 45 automatic moves too quickly when barely tapped by his fingers to be an actual gun made of "heavy" wood and metal, revealing it as a balsa wood prop.

Quotes:

Kathy: You... you have a lot of very fine qualities. But...
Joe Turner: What fine qualities?
Kathy: You have good eyes. Not kind, but they don't lie, and they don't look away much, and they don't miss anything. I could use eyes like that.
Joe Turner: But you're overdue in Vermont. Is he a tough guy?
Kathy: He's pretty tough.
Joe Turner: What will he do?
Kathy: Understand, probably.
Joe Turner: Boy. That is tough.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Entourage: No Cannes Do (#4.11)" (2007)

As effective now as it was then, but only more so.

How many movies about events that were happening at the time that they were released stand the test of time, in this case almost 30 years after the movie was made. "Three Days of the Condor" wasn't a major blockbuster in 1975 and didn't win any Academy Awards the next spring, But if it were remade today it would hold up as good as any film about government secret covert policies and behind the scenes action as any movie about the same subject would now.

The movie "Three Days of the Condor" eerily as well as accurately predicts the very situation that the US has got itself into now,in 2003,in the oil-rich Middle and Near East some twenty eight years ago back in in 1975! Robert Redford, Joe Turner, works for the CIA and is doing his job like he's done it for years. He reads and interprets books, without the slightest suspicion of how he, as well as his co-workers, is looked upon when it comes to the real scheme of things to what his bosses think about what's going on in the world.

Turner takes his employment in the CIA, which is one that he obviously needed to get a very high government clearance, like most working people would;a 9 to 5 job with a months vacation and a good government pension waiting for him when he retires. One day when it, unknowing at the time to Turner, luckily comes his turn get lunch for his co-workers that he finds out that working for an outfit like the CIA is a lot more dangerous then him getting mugged or having his motor bike stolen on his way to work. From then on until the end of the movie and even beyond Turner is a marked man, not marked by the enemies of the US but by his CIA bosses themselves.

"Three Days of the Condor" is a true "Man without a Country" movie when Turner as well as those that he worked with, who were loyal to their country and the agency that employed them, were deemed expendable because of a slight case of paranoia from a top administrator in the agency.

The CIA outfit that Turner was in were checking out a book, that seemed to be some kind of secret blueprint, written in a number of unlikely and foreign languages about a Western-type country plotting to, and taking over, an or a number of oil-rich Middle-East nations! This is exactly what's happening in Iraq today!

I doubt that A movie like "Three Days of the Condor" would be made today given the climate of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the "War on Terrorism" in both Afghanistan & Iraq that quickly followed. But back in 1975 when we here in the USA were living in a more peaceful and secure time and with the Frank Church Commission investigating in public the accesses of the US intelligence agencies it could.

I especially liked the cast of Cliff Robertson, Higgens, Max Von Saydo, Jobert, and Faye Dunaway, Kathy, besides of course Robert Redford's Joe Turner. I liked the contrast between Higgens and Jobert in the fact that Higgens was a career man working for the government and Jobert was a contract killer only working for whoever paid him. Even though Jobert should have been the heavy in the film he was by far more sympathetic because what he did was only a job, and that all it was, to him and his encounter with Turner towards the end of the movie, who's job it was for him to kill, wasn't that threatening and not at all as personal as Turners scenes with Higgens were.

Higgens always came across as a con-man who would shoot you, or have someone shoot you, in the back as soon as you turned around. This contrast goes to show you that a person who hires a killer to kill someone is far more guilty then the one that does the killing himself. Charles Manson didn't kill anyone, he had others do the killing for him, but he's more responsible for those murders back in 1969 then the ones that did the killings themselves.

Faye Dunaway as Kathy was great as the innocent bystander who's life was turned upside down, by all these events that she had no knowledge or control of. She showed fear and outrage at first and then later realizing that Turner was telling the truth and that she ,like him, had no choice in the matter because she "knew too much" but to risk her life, what else could she do. Kathy ended up helping him because helping Turner or not she was also targeted like he was so she might as well do what was right.

I'm surprised that I didn't read or hear anyone talk about, not all these years after "Three Days of the Condor" was released, the fact that a good part of the movie as shot in and around the ill-faded World Trade Center in NYC. In fact I think that "Three Days of the Condor" was the first major motion picture that was filmed there. The WTC was opened to the public in 1974 and the movie was made in late 1974 and early 1975. Even more ironic about the film is that Higgens, who was undoubtedly the villain in it, had his CIA offices located in of all places, you guessed it, the World Trade Center.