THE WAY WE WERE: The Clash of Love Story and Politics (50th Anniversary 4K/BluRay Disc Release)
The first time I saw The Way We Were was on television in 1979 or 1980; I was nine or ten years old.
A shot of Barbra Streisand (as Katie Morosky) in the opening credits particularly got my attention. We see girls enjoying the camaraderie of their sorority, and as the camera pans towards a window, it catches Katie gazing up as she walks by.
As a kid who already felt “on the outside looking in,” I felt an innate understanding and recognition.
I also understood, that as much as I may have wanted to, I was not likely to grow up to be like jock Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford), or his friends; the beautiful, popular people.
When Katie is humiliated after giving a speech on her college campus, or later in the story, feels completely out of step with Hubbell’s friends, I related to Katie even more.
The romance of the movie, and the impact of the immortal closing scene between Streisand and Redford, which tends to move anyone with a hint of romantic impulse, was totally lost on me, given my age.
That changed, inevitably, as I grew older, as parallels between my own story, and the Katie Morosky story, came into sharper focus. To be a gay, Jewish man who tended to be attracted to “the unattainable,” it was impossible not to look to Katie and The Way We Were as a sort of “archetype.”
Streisand was already “my hero” long before I saw The Way We Were. By my mid-30’s, though, I’d also made a bit of a hero out of the film’s screenwriter, Arthur Laurents, especially after reading his first memoir, Original Story By.
Several of Laurents’ anecdotes about The Way We Were led me to an idea for a variation on the story. The idea nagged at me for about five or six years until I decided to take a screenwriting class at UCLA. The class helped me finally “get it out.”
The one aspect of that script I never quite cracked was the political framing, because as much as The Way We Were is a love story, it’s also a political story, and the politics of the characters, especially Katie Morosky, mattered. To me, anyway.
Especially after I saw a 1999 documentary on the making of The Way We Were, called Looking Back.
In the documentary, I was able to see deleted, politically driven scenes I’d read about as far back as 1981, in my personal favorite biography of Streisand, James Spada’s Streisand: The Woman and the Legend.
The original climax of the romance tied more directly to the paranoia and fear surrounding Communism, the House UnAmerican Activities Commission (HUAC), informers, and the blacklisting of the “Hollywood Ten” in the late 1940s.
In the earlier part of the film, Katie is part of the Young Communist League, and although she has left the League by the latter half of the film, the “red scare” in Hollywood comes back to haunt.
In 1981, Laurents said, “The original ending was this: because of the witch hunt, he [Hubbell], comes home from the studio and says, “They’re gonna fire me because you’re a subversive. If you don’t inform, I’m out of a job.”
“She [Katie] says, “There’s a very easy answer; you won’t have a subversive wife — we’ll get a divorce.”
This was cut from the film.
Laurents continued, “If you know how much principles meant to this woman [Katie], you can understand how she could divorce a man she loves rather than betray those principles.”
“By cutting that scene, they undercut the character. The way it is now, it looks like the marriage breaks up because he goes to bed with another girl, which is not only cliche but untrue.”
“[This breakup was about] the character of a woman,” Laurents concluded. “Maybe it was too early in the feminist cycle to show a woman who had not only intelligence but political passion and principles.”
Reading about the genuine reason Katie and Hubbell split up was one thing. Scenes get cut from movies all the time; I felt no deep investment. I hadn’t yet caught on to the argument that without this story beat, the reason for Katie and Hubbell’s breakup doesn’t make much sense.
Actually seeing some of the deleted moments, nearly twenty years later in the documentary, changed that. The breakup was suddenly more interesting and complex!
I couldn't imagine why director Sydney Pollack chose to cut it, despite being well aware of how the politics of The Way We Were always “dogged” the movie.
Pollack acknowledged the problems with the movie’s politics in The Woman and the Legend. “[The Way We Were] is not a film of ideas, which it could have been and should have been,” he said. “I don’t think it successfully mixed the politics with the love story except in the beginning.”
One idea Pollack had to add some grit to the story was, “I wanted to make him [Hubbell] an informer, and have that break them up……but I wanted him to be a sympathetic character too, so that wouldn’t have worked.”
Redford concurred, also quoted in 1981 as saying, “[That’s a] different movie. That’s a cold, hard look at what happens to people in that kind of situation. This was a love story. The love story was the most important thing.”
The political aspects of the story continued to be a problem, especially after the perceptions of initial audience reaction had an impact.
The story goes that the first of two previews of The Way We Were occurred in San Francisco on a Friday and Saturday night in September 1973.
In James Spada’s other exemplary biography, Streisand: Her Life, Spada quotes Pollack, “We lost the audience completely,” as the blacklisting scenes unfolded at the Friday night screening.
In Looking Back, Pollack re-confirmed this, saying, “It was a real sobering experience, because I’d never had [something] happen quite so clearly or in such a black and white way.”
In Her Life, Pollack says his perception of that Friday night screening was, “The politics just got too complicated for the audience. They wanted us to stick with the love story.”
So did the film’s producer, Ray Stark, who was pressuring Pollack to ensure a hit movie. Laurents told Spada, “Ray Stark said we had to choose between the love story and the politics. I think that’s balderdash.”
Pollack did not have a Moviola on hand at the preview site. So, in the late hours of the night, he and editor Margaret Booth took scissors and a razor blade and lopped off 7 or 8 (some sources say 11) minutes, all political material.
The loss of this material affected two crucial plot points: one) a sequence where Katie realizes she may have lost herself by coming to Hollywood, and two) probably more importantly, that Katie and Hubbell break up because she’s been informed on, and it will affect his ability to work; where “the love story and the political story come together.”
Audience reaction at the next screening was completely different.
“All of a sudden everyone was ecstatic about [the movie],” Pollack said. “It was a flop on Friday night. It was a hit on Saturday night.”
…..but, now the climax didn’t exist!
Of that fact, in 1999, Arthur Laurents said, “nobody knew, and nobody cared. The climax wasn’t there. [Movie audiences] didn’t give a damn.”
Streisand was even more upset.
“The political backdrop of this beautiful love story sets it apart from other love stories,” she said. “That’s why you can’t ignore the political ramifications of why they split up.”
More recently, in an excerpt for Vanity Fair magazine from her forthcoming autobiography (My Name Is Barbra, November 7th), Streisand writes, “I agreed with Sydney on three of those scenes [that were cut]. They involved subsidiary characters having political discussions that went on so long even I lost interest.”
She continues, “but don’t cut the two scenes that were pivotal to the plot. Don’t cut the crucial three and a half minutes that the whole film revolves around.”
According to Pollack in Looking Back, he and Barbra had a “30 year discussion” about the scenes she fought to keep in.
“I don’t say, to this day, that I [was] right!,” he said.
“I thought I was right at the time…there is value in these scenes…I don’t think it would destroy the picture if they were in.” He added he thought the story was a “cleaner line” without the scenes.
Streisand’s feeling was the cuts undermined the entire film, “It was such a betrayal of Arthur’s story. It destroyed the soul of Katie’s character…and destroyed me,” she writes in her memoir.
Streisand has maintained the cuts in her personal archive since 1973, and gained permission from Sony to reincorporate the two scenes she considered the most crucial for a 50th Anniversary 4K/BluRay disc release.
The disc has Pollack’s theatrical cut, and a version Streisand oversaw, which is extended by five minutes. It also contains a feature length commentary from Pollack recorded in 1999, and the aforementioned Looking Back documentary.
This is truly the best The Way We Were has ever looked for home viewing. Many 4K scans scrub older films of their film grain to a point they look too digitally artifacted and smoothed out, but the best 4K scans make a film look like you’re watching a perfect print in a theater.
This disc has that quality; it’s the highest compliment I can pay.
As for the extended cut, I find myself a bit shocked to write this after all the years of agreeing with Streisand and Laurents, but the sequences were more effective as they were presented in the documentary!
Especially the second of the two scenes, where Hubbell tells Katie she’s been informed on. I thought there was much more to this scene than had been shown in the documentary, and it turns out, there wasn’t.
The scene doesn’t play as Laurents originally stated in 1981 — that Hubbell comes home and says “if you don’t inform, I’m out of a job.” That actually has more drama in it!
Instead, Hubbell passes on the information and the scene is Katie realizing she may have to inform in order for him to keep working, which Hubbell is not asking her to do.
In fact, Hubbell doesn’t offer much at all. He “goes along” much like his character always has, which is certainly consistent. However, by this point in the film, especially after a fiery argument at a train station a few scenes earlier, maybe Hubbell ought to be a little more active in this chat.
As correct as it may be, it feels as though Katie comes to the conclusion of divorce too quickly and neatly. The scene needed a bit more interaction between Katie and Hubbell for her decision to carry more weight.
Despite the original cut not making much sense, there is more of a balance between the two characters in the shorter version of the scene. Hubbell doesn’t come off like a complete wimp.
So, I now understand why Pollack felt the film would survive without the story beat. It mattered for the integrity of Katie as a character. It may not have mattered for the film overall.
Even Laurents stated, “The Way We Were was Katie’s movie, and no amount of changes would take it away from her.”
I expected the re-addition of these two scenes would make The Way We Were a stronger movie. I’m truly surprised to say it doesn’t make much of a difference beyond a more logical explanation, but I’ll still watch the extended cut from now on.
I think today’s audiences will have a deeper appreciation for the political ramifications in the extended cut of The Way We Were (given the heavier level of political investment and focus in this era) and I’m grateful people will have the opportunity to see the movie closer to what was originally intended.
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The rollout for the 50th Anniversary disc has been strange and frustrating. I can’t recall ever having such difficulty finding a home video release.
I can only assume there are supply issues. On release date (October 17), getting a physical copy from Amazon within a day or two was impossible.
That changed slightly the day I published this (October 26), but other retailers are still listing delivery dates a week or two out from ordering, and links to order the disc have disappeared completely from some sites.
Apparently, no brick and mortar stores are carrying it.
The lack of easy availability for a title with this high of a profile is surprising. This is the 50th anniversary celebration of a major, romantic classic, and extended versions of classic films are extremely rare.
As for digital/streaming, I originally laid out significant delays with the extended cut appearing on Apple/iTunes as Streisand indicated she wanted in her memoir excerpt.
It finally went live the afternoon of October 26th, nine days after release and about an hour after I published, so I’ve chopped all that information as it’s now irrelevant.
