📽️ The last time I saw “Three Days of the Condor,” dir. Sydney Pollack (Paramount, 1975), was long enough ago that I didn’t get as much out of its mid-seventies paranoia about the CIA as I did this time around. Or maybe it just didn’t gnaw away at me like it’s doing now. I grew up in a small rural town, but the grit in that movie pervaded a lot of popular television culture. I also heard my fair share of conspiracy-theory talk during my teens. Besides, the CIA was in the news.

I’m still not sure what to make of the mentality expressed in this film. It’s interesting, in any case, to speculate about how anti-establishment images and paranoia from the period have mapped onto both ends of our political spectrum.

A few lines from the movie

"Maybe there's another CIA inside the CIA."

"Oil fields."

"We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do."

"How do you know they'll print it?"