Don Koll Movies

This modest teen comedy has the usual themes revolving around sex: how to handle it, how to relate to it, and how to do just about everything except engage in it. The focus is on two teenagers, one is the serious Natalie (Jennifer Connelly). She has her eyes set on becoming President of the U.S. and one day heads off to Washington D.C. on a special visit for "Future Leaders." A certain presidential aide brings a romantic touch to her idealized vision. The other teen is Polly Franklin (Maddie Corman) whose infatuation with a baseball player takes her to New York -- where a photographer steps in as a pinch-hitter. A few other subplots move circumstances around in the two teens' lives, though their romantic exploits take center stage. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

"Gorgeous goyish guy" meets Jewish radical girl in Sydney Pollack's glossy romance. In 1937, frizzy-haired Red co-ed Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) briefly captures the attention of preppy jock Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) with her passionate pacifism, while the writing talent beneath his privileged exterior entrances her. Almost eight years later, the two are reunited in New York, when well-coiffed leftist radio worker Katie spies military officer Hubbell snoozing in a nightclub. Through her force of will, and in spite of his smug rich friends, the two opposites fall in love, sparring over Katie's activist zeal and Hubbell's writerly ambivalence after a failed first novel. They head to Hollywood so that Hubbell can write a screenplay for his buddy-turned-producer J.J. (Bradford Dillman). But the House Committee on Un-American Activities' Communist witch hunt in 1947 tears the pair apart, as a pregnant Katie refuses to keep silent about the jailing of the Hollywood Ten, while a faithless Hubbell decides to save his career. When the two meet again at the dawn of the '60s, TV hack Hubbell and A-bomb protestor Katie feel the old pull, but they have to decide if it's worth the grief. Although blacklisted writers had returned to Hollywood -- and won Oscars -- by the early 1970s, the HUAC sections of Arthur Laurents's screenplay were still considered dicey, resulting in substantial cuts; Laurents reportedly blamed star Redford for not fighting them hard enough. Regardless of the edits, and critics' complaints about the film's schlockiness, 1973 audiences went for the well-executed and still politically tinged weepie, turning The Way We Were into one of the most popular films of 1973 and Redford into a major heartthrob. Streisand won an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and the Streisand-sung title tune won for Best Song. Despite the eviscerated politics, The Way We Were poignantly captures the insoluble dilemma of reconciling private desires with public awareness. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

New York detective Moe Brummell (George Segal) is assigned to track down a serial killer who has been preying on lonely middle-aged ladies. Each of the bodies is discovered with a lipstick kiss drawn on the forehead. We know (but Brummell doesn't) that the murderer is Christopher Gill (Rod Steiger), a round-the-bend actor whose hatred for his mother has driven him to his killing spree. Gill is fond of adopting a different personality and costume with each killing (a priest, a homosexual, a plumber etc.), making him doubly difficult to trace. When Brummell comments to the media that he's up against a criminal genius, he finds himself the reluctant recipient of Gill's anonymous phone calls, wherein the killer plants cryptic clues leading to his next crime. It may not be readily apparent from the previous sentence, but No Way to Treat a Lady is a comedy-albeit a jet-black one. Moe Brummell is hampered with an archetypal Jewish mamma (Eileen Heckart), who in her own way is as deadly as the elusive Christopher Gill. Lee Remick plays Brummell's girl friend, who, as the only person who might be able to identify Gill, is placed in harm's way at the film's climax. A curious by-product of No Way to Treat a Lady is the fact that Rod Steiger was cast in the lead in the 1976 biopic W.C. Fields and Me on the basis of the third-rate Fields imitation he offers to George Segal during one of his taunting phone calls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Julie Harris repeats her stage portrayal of the irrepressible Sally Bowles in John Van Druten's I Am a Camera. Set in pre-Hitler Berlin, the film details the curious, chaste relationship between Sally, an entertainer at a bawdy nightclub, and fledgling writer Christopher Isherwood (Lawrence Harvey). Shelley Winters co-stars as Natalia Landauer, whose impending marriage to a wealthy young Jewish man is imperiled by the anti-Semitism which envelops Berlin as the Nazis gain political power. If all this sounds familiar to you, it is because I Am a Camera is the non-musical precursor to the Broadway musical hit Cabaret. Both properties were based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories. Those familiar with the film version of Cabaret will notice that certain plot elements have been watered down in Camera. Examples: Isherwood's homosexuality is left unmentioned, save for Lawrence Harvey's opaque opening comment that he is "a confirmed bachelor;" and Sally Bowles' third-act abortion is changed into a false-alarm pregnancy. Also, Julie Harris' dynamic but rather overbaked interpretation of Sally is not nearly as memorable as Liza Minelli's Oscar-winning interpretation of the character in Cabaret. Still, I Am a Camera is well directed and deftly adapted for the screen (by John Collier); and even taking into consideration Ms. Harris' hamminess, she remains one of the most fascinating stage personalities of the mid-20th century. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide