BEFORE: After some mental dispute over whether I've seen this one before - my ex made me watch a lot of Redford movies - I determined that I didn't recall anything about it, so the fastest way to settle the matter was to watch it and cross it off the list. With the Streisand movies, I'm taking a similar approach as the one I took to eat the giant sandwich: divide and conquer. If I watch them all at once, it would be too much, but I might be able to handle one or two at a time.
THE PLOT: Two desperate people have a wonderful romance, but their political views and convictions drive them apart.
AFTER: Yes, I made the right call. Nothing about this film seemed familiar in any way, so I must not have seen it - maybe I was confusing it with "Barefoot in the Park".
And Streisand plays a Communist - I knew it! I mean, I knew she was a leftist liberal, but this seems a little extreme. But the movie starts in 1937, when the Communists were sort of Allies with the U.S. against the Nazi regime, so that's a little different. Robert Redford plays a young writer/college jock who encounters her working in a diner - then they don't see each other until 8 years later at the height of WWII, when he's a naval officer (though we never see him doing anything close to military service...) and she's still a political activist (a commie who likes FDR? Does that even make sense?)
Streisand's Katie brings a very drunk Hubbell home from a bar, and seduces him in his sleep (not cool...) and from then it's an on-again, off-again relationship that lasts through the end of the war and into the 1950's. She encourages him to write another novel, and he wants to write for Hollywood films - hmm, Hollywood screenwriter in the 1950's, his wife has a communist background - nope, don't see any problems looming in the distance for this couple!
There's a pregnancy, and an affair, and eventually they realize that they're two very different people (duh!) and then it's another 20 years before they bump into each other and remember "The Way We Were". Again, it's not my kind of film but I can see where it has some kind of importance for people, unlike "Funny Girl".
I did like the visual pun where all the Hollywood types accused of being Marxist had a costume party where everyone dressed as Groucho or Harpo Marx...funny stuff.
Just a few more romance films, then I can move on to one of my favorite topics - I swear this is all leading somewhere...
RATING: 4 out of 10 protest signs
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