The Slender Thread (1965)

...even if it couldn't be made today, at least the way it was made then.It was a terrific suspense movie that had the added benefit of showing Poitier in a totally race-neutral role as young psychology student Alan Newell who is volunteering at the local suicide hotline crisis center on a night that he has every reason to believe will be quiet...and then Inga Dyson (Ann Bancroft) calls him. She has just taken a bottle of barbiturates, does not want to be rescued, but does want to talk. So Alan has to keep his cool and keep Inga on the line long enough to be found, and she only has about 90 minutes to live.What makes this movie totally anachronistic today is that the entire plot centers around a coordinated effort by scores of public servants in Seattle to trace Inga's phone number and save her before the pills do their job. Of course it would take about 10 seconds for the line to be traced today, which would kind of do away with the suspense.The suspense is that her call COULD be traced, but it requires the huge telephone company building with countless thousands of connecting plugs and wires that had to be narrowed down, plus the police and fire departments and the State Department of Motor Vehicles, in order to locate the caller's number and where she was calling from. It was like a giant public works department that gave employment to pretty much every proactive player we see in the movie.In the character development department we have a conversation between Alan an Inga in which we see how she got to the point of despair. It is one part of unforgiveness on her husband's part for a deed done before they were ever married, too much time on Inga's hands one day as the husband continues to stay emotionally detached from her as though she is some unclean thing, the fact that she wanted to talk to somebody about how she felt but could find nobody who would, and the final straw involves the death of an injured bird that is regarded callously by those around her while she tries to help.In addition to Poitier and Bancroft, Steven Hill gives a chilling and highly credible performance as the unforgiving husband who's driven Bancroft to her suicide attempt. He's such a creepy character that he makes us almost want to force him to swallow those pills instead, and that's a sign that he plays the part to perfection. Highly recommended because the emotions still ring true even if the technology is long gone.

A college student who volunteers one night a week at a crisis help center receives a call from a woman who has just taken an overdose of barbiturates...can he keep her on the line long enough for the police to find and rescue her? Slim plot puffed up with importance by director Sydney Pollack, making his feature film debut; Pollack opens the picture with a dizzying array of overhead shots of Seattle, presumably to help us get our bearings for where we are and who the main players are, but with Quincy Jones madly changing music cues in the background, it becomes an unintentionally silly set-piece. Sidney Poitier plays the student with a nimble mix of concern, panic and irritation, and only occasionally is he encouraged to overdo it (Pollack certainly doesn't help, giving us too many extreme close-ups of Poitier wild-eyed and sweating). Anne Bancroft is the troubled wife and mother whose world is crashing down around her (actually, it's just her marriage) and I'm not sure what we're meant to get out of the glimpses of her working life (Bancroft asks a co-worker to go to lunch, and when the girl says she's busy Bancroft appears terribly wounded--doesn't she have any other acquaintances who care about her? and what about her relationship with her boss, which sounds one-sided-flirtatious?). Bancroft, with a big crop of wavy hair, is weighed down by this woeful role and she's forced into looking shell-shocked most of the time, though there is one scene--the hospital waiting room--where she gets to break character a bit and gets a wicked gleam in her eye. The movie is well-paced and is full of visual accoutrements, but one wonders about that ending and what exactly was solved. **1/2 from ****

I saw this title coming up on TCM, read the synopsis, and KNEW instantly that this one I had to see. And like I said, I should have known. Poitier is probably one of the top ten dramatic actors of ALL TIME! I'm not sure I've ever seen a bad film that he was in. This little gem, was tremendous. I don't comment on many film's but when I see one I haven't seen before, and it's as good as this one, I can't restrain myself. Watch it when/if you can, and you won't be disappointed! There are many subplots and twists to this film, and it has many fine performances, including Telly Savalas, and Ann Bancroft. There are small parts, for a young Dabney Coleman, and one of Ed Asner's early ones as well. I am a classic movie buff, with over 800 titles in my library, and I simply love it when I come across a new one that I hadn't seen/heard of before. Like I said, Watch this one when/if you can.

This film has stuck in my mind since seeing in the early 70s, when I was a child. This is only my second viewing, and while I still find the movie quite effective, the overacting of Poitier makes it a little less enjoyable. Bancroft is wonderful, and quite sympathetic, in the lead. As stated in a previous post, this is Pollack's first feature - what an excellent start. The Seattle location filming is beautiful, and it's nice to see the 64 World's Fair site on celluloid. (Of course, for more detailed coverage, there's Elvis's "It Happened at the World's Fair" from 1964.)Just for the sake of curiosity, I wonder if the hotel where she is found, is still standing today. It was a Hyatt at that time.