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April 26, 2005

Line, please: Sydney Pollack's compulsive repetition

Sydney Pollack's got this ticking in his head, a line he tells Anthony Minghella that's occured in four of his movies. In 3 Days of the Condor, writes the Guardian, "Pollack's line is spoken by an outraged Robert Redford, on discovering that the folks at Langley have a secret plan to invade the Middle East to secure America's oil supplies... "What is it with you people?... You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?" (No, he is informed, "It's simple economics.") The line... is, of course, a variation on the Latin tag favoured by lawyers: Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi. That is to say, the suppression of truth is the suggestion of falsehood. It's less easy to place the other two usages but a good bet would be Tootsie (1982) and The Firm (1993), two Pollack-directed films in which the main characters live a lie."

Posted by at April 26, 2005 12:59 PM

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