An Iconic Movie for Our Paranoid Age

What do the Mission Impossible and Bourne Identity movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Junk Mail episode of Seinfeld and the actual KGB all have in common? They, along with innumerable paranoia embracing “Trust no one.” espionage entertainments, all borrow liberally from and pay homage to the enduringly iconic 1975 spy thriller Three Days of the Condor.

Sydney Pollack’s clever, grittily realistic film about a CIA analyst on the run sprang forth in a Post-Watergate era of gloom and institutional distrust . Sound familiar? In our current pick-your-own conspiracy era, when Post-Watergate can seem like the good old days, Condor’s themes of trust and paranoia resonate more deeply than ever.

So on its fiftieth anniversary let’s look back at an unusually prescient and impactful film that told the twisted tale of some “poor dumb son of a bitch” who “did more damage” than he’ll “ever know”.

While similar to earlier paranoia-infused films like Alan J. Pakula’s pulpier The Parallax View and John Frankenheimer’s florid Freudian mind control fantasy The Manchurian Candidate, Pollack’s Condor is more grounded. It doesn’t make up organisations — it’s about the CIA, and the filmmakers did their homework. Almost too well. There were contemporary reports ‘The Company’ was more than a bit concerned about how they would be portrayed. They were right to worry.

In Condor a blowdried Robert Redford sporting some serious sideburns and aviator frames — Brad Pitt lifted this look for his Cliff Booth in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (also a book! Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)— is aspiring novelist Joe Turner. Turner, a City College of New York graduate and former Bell Labs employee pays the rent working as part of a team of CIA analysts operating out of a front named the American Literary Historical Society in a tony New York Brownstone about a block off Madison Avenue. Their mission is simple. Read everything. From obscure journals and foreign language publications to spy novels. Especially spy novels. Working with the most up to date computers of the era for translation and collation they look for leaks, unexpected revelations, and new ideas.

On Bill Maher’s Club Random a slightly toasted Quentin Tarantino recently voiced his admiration for Pollack’s film but pooh poohed the idea that any government intelligence agency would do this. But this was one of the many things Condor in its cinéma-vérité leanings got right. Governments do this. For example, the CIA’s Open Source Enterprise (OSE) has been scanning novels and other publically available material for leaks and ideas since 1943. In fact, it is confirmed Condor lore that the KGB’s NIIP program was created after a top KGB agent saw the film. One can forgive Quentin. It was Club Random, after all, and he was high. Meanwhile, Bill Maher, another fan, thought the movie was “hot.” (We’ll get to that later.)

The movie hits the ground running with an opening sequence depicting the slaughter of Turner’s likeable office colleagues by a group of ruthlessly efficient killers armed with — ideal for close quarters — Sten submachine guns fitted with silencers. Directing the assault is Joubert (Max Von Sydow) a tall, smooth pay-to-play assassin in a streamlined trench coat and Tyrolean trillby. The effortlessly urbane and eerily at peace Joubert is one of the imposing Swede’s great late career roles.

Turner who earlier serendipitously slipped out a back window to get everyone lunch returns to find his colleagues all dead. What follows is the iconic, powerful “code name Condor” “everybody’s dead” phone-booth scene that would be so successfully refitted for Tom Cruise in the first Mission Impossible movie.

Things quickly get complicated and Turner is soon on the run with both the real CIA and a rogue element in pursuit. It is this enemy within element Joe and Anthony Russo so eagerly admitted borrowing from Condor along with its grey wintery environment and claustrophobic camera angles for Captain America: Winter Soldier. During the promotion of Winter Soldier the brothers said they wanted to make a big superhero movie but at the same time secretly do a seventies political thriller – more specifically something like Condor. To make the tribute even clearer the brothers cast a much older Redford as the leader of the secret cabal within the US government posited in that film.

Condor’s DNA can also be found in the other great film depiction of the CIA, the Coen Brothers Burn After Reading. Echoes of the interaction between Turner’s in-over-his-head CIA handler Higgins (Cliff Robertson) and senior intelligence official Washburn (John Houseman) can be seen in the similarly framed CIA briefing scenes in Burn. These similarities go right down to the senior intelligence officials in both films very inside-baseball rapid dismissal out of hand of any suggestion of getting the even more bumbling FBI involved in their unfolding fiascos.

One important element of Condor that has thankfully not found any eager emulators is the rapey marriage-by-capture manner in which Turner enlists moody, sonorous, sloe-eyed commercial photographer Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway) to his cause. He basically kidnaps Hale at gunpoint from a sporting goods store and forces her to take him to her apartment. Turner places his firearm to her head at least two times, promises to harm her if she does not follow his orders, and compliments her artwork. From the original screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel : “Somehow his tone makes her feel the eroticism of her own position: bound, overpowered by an armed stranger, his weight against her. She’s helpless.” Boy! That did not age well. Sure. One can discuss the problematic relationship through the dynamic of erotic fantasy versus reality. This is possibly what Maher was thinking when he described the film as hot before not elucidating. (Remember he was stoned too. ) But this is definitely not something to try at home. 

Towards the end, last pursuer standing Joubert and a still on the run Turner have one of the most memorable exchanges in espionage entertainment. A now off the clock, part bemused part impressed, Joubert warns Turner no matter what anyone says the US is no longer safe for him. Then after handing Turner back his .45 automatic sets out how he will die. “It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.”

Joubert’s masterful warning would be borrowed more than a quarter century later by those classic film clip recreation loving magpies at Seinfeld. The homage takes place in the ninth season “Junk Mail” episode which involves Kramer disappearing down his own government conspiracy rabbit hole. The sitcom’s writers acknowledging Joubert’s lines almost unparalleled ability to conjure up an atmosphere of oppression, creeping paranoia and dread have Newman repeat them almost word for word to alert Jerry’s favorite neighbor to the dangers of crossing another powerful government entity. This time the US Post Office. The parody works whether viewers are familiar with the movie or not. For those who are familiar it adds a doubly satisfying easter egg frisson to their delight.

Condor careens along to its conclusion as the rogue element of the CIA is exposed and viewers discover why the analysis group was targeted — Turner was close to uncovering the hidden cabal within the agency and its plot to engineer an invasion of the Middle East. (Like that would happen!)

Safe from the rogue CIA but still not sure if he can trust the genuine article, Turner’s solution is to go to the press with his blockbuster story. However, in the final minutes of the film when he presents his would-be handler Higgins with his plan Turner’s triumph is short-lived.

This is the moment Condor earns its place atop the paranoia film pantheon. As he watches the triumphant Turner start walking away the slightest wisp of a smile slowly curls on Higgin’s lips. He pauses ever so briefly then delivers the film’s punch line. “How do you know they’ll print it?”

The movie ends with a freeze frame of the “poor dumb son of a bitch” looking over his shoulder.