Thursday, April 30, 2009

Blast from the past: Sydney Pollack talks about Sabrina (1995)


As I noted in my original review, Sydney Pollack demonstrated in his 1995 remake of Billy Wilder's Sabrina that "after three decades in the director's chair, he remains Hollywood's most accomplished master of the grand romantic gesture. Just as important, he proves that he can make the very kind of movie that everyone says that nobody is making anymore. Sabrina is Hollywood classicism at its most luxuriantly enjoyable..." Granted: This was, and is, a minority opinion. But as I look at the above video of my 1995 interview with the late filmmaker, I'm reminded again that no other director has ever managed to make Harrison Ford appear so emotionally vulnerable on screen. And it sort of makes you wonder what other kinds of roles Ford might have attempted during the past decade or so had Pollack's Sabrina not been a box-office under-achiever. BTW: While you watch, please remember that this conversation was recorded at a time when Billy Wilder still was very much alive. And, yes, fully capable of teasing Pollack about possible remakes of Pollack's own movies.

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