They shoot horses, don't they?

Sydney Pollack’s 1969 feature They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? isn’t currently available to rent, isn’t available to stream, and isn’t available to purchase… which is an absolute travesty, since you could make the case that it’s one of *the* great American movies - if not from an artistic standpoint, then unquestionably from a thematic one. As a critique of capitalist society, it slices like a straight razor, its bloodletting uninhibited, its modern relevance wholly undiminished over a half-century later. A dance marathon might seem like frivolous subject matter on the surface, but one needs to understand that what began as a fun fad in the 1920s had evolved into a sinister endurance test by the early-30s (often spanning weeks, if not months), designed to exploit and degrade the desperate and the destitute during the Great Depression… the promise of eye-watering prize money dangling like a carrot at the end of an impossibly long stick. The movie essentially paved the way for fatalistic pop spectacles such as Squid Game, The Long Walk, and The Hunger Games, but this was no dystopian vision of the future… or even the product of one’s creative imagination. It was ripped straight from the annals of America’s poisonous past.

As the film begins, we watch as the competition’s would-be contestants shuffle into a run-down ballroom on the Santa Monica Pier, much like the damned entering Limbo - facing judgment not in the form of King Minos, but rather the jaundiced eye of promoter/emcee Rocky (Gig Young). Gloria (Jane Fonda) is a hardened young woman who wears her resentment at the world like chipped and worn battle armor. Her would-be partner is disqualified for bronchitis, resulting in her being randomly paired with wide-eyed drifter Robert (Michael Sarrazin), who happened to wander in after the outdoor advertisement caught his eye. Normally, the pointed lack of character development would be a limitation… but these are people with no past and no future. They exist only within the purgatory of the dance floor. At first there’s an almost jaunty camaraderie as the opening hour unfolds, spirits upbeat and the dancing energetic, the rafters still sparsely populated. Aging sailor Harold (Red Buttons) breaks into a spontaneous soft-shoe routine, basking in the applause as the crowd tosses approving pennies at his feet. Other key figures include struggling actors Joel and Alice (Robert Fields and Susannah York), who hope to catch the eye of a Hollywood talent scout, as well as impoverished farmer James (Bruce Dern) and his pregnant wife Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia).

Reality sets in as hours turn to days, and days turn to weeks. Ten-minute rest periods are granted every few hours. Contestants prop their sleeping partners up, ensuring their knees don’t strike the ground, resulting in instant disqualification. Meals are served banquet-style on the dance floor, heightening the sense of grotesque spectacle. Individuals still play to the crowd (such as when Ruby performs a heartrending rendition of “The Best Things in Life Are Free”), but the pennies start to feel a lot like peanuts. At one point, Robert sticks his head outside just to get a glimpse of the ocean, only to be admonished to “go rest up” - as if sunlight and fresh air are a luxury  beyond their grasp, unafforded by their subhuman status. The proceedings turn downright diabolical when, in order to kindle spectator enthusiasm, a series of dehumanizing derbies are staged - the contestants forced to don tank tops and track shorts as they race in tandem around the floor, nerves frayed and muscles cramping, pushed to the brink of collapse, the bottom three couples ruthlessly culled from the herd. When Rocky refers to the competition as a “show” and Robert naively asks “Isn’t it a contest?” the response is one of the more sobering summations of human nature you’ll ever hear. “Not for them. For you maybe, but not for them. They don't give a damn whether you win or James and Ruby or Mario and Jackie or the Man in the Moon and Little Miss Muffet. They just want to see a little misery out there so they can feel a little better maybe. They're entitled to that.” 

Jane Fonda’s life has been colored by so many different aspects - her antiwar activism, her 80s aerobics empire - that it’s sometimes easy to overlook what a phenomenal talent she was early in her career. She made this film and Klute back-to-back, helping usher in a newfound emphasis on gritty, interior dimension that flowered throughout the 70s, and you’d be hard-pressed to name a better pair of performances. One can only speculate on the specifics of Gloria’s traumatic past, the ways in which life has chipped away at her pitilessly (she seems to regard Ruby’s pregnancy as a personal affront, demanding to know how she can justify bringing a baby into this world if she can’t even take care of herself). Fonda doesn’t play Gloria for sympathy; she lets her pain speak for itself, raw and unfiltered. In the climatic derby, she finds herself paired with Harold, who suffers a heart attack mid-race… and the sight of Fonda literally dragging his lifeless body across the finish line, her face contorted in primal anguish, is difficult to shake. Gig Young, meanwhile, earned a well-deserved Oscar for his jaded portrayal of Rocky. He’s not immune to the horrors he’s promoting, the shameless ways in which he eggs on the crowd… we see the emotional toll the marathon takes on him (both physically, and in terms of his alcoholism), the flicker of compassion when he allows the mask to slip a fraction (such as when Alice finally suffers a full nervous breakdown in the shower), the minor kindnesses he occasionally shows his flock, as if trying to mitigate his own damnation. Nonetheless, Rocky knows the score - he’s the devil’s mouthpiece and his soul has long since been bartered. The marathon is an insatiable machine and, one way or another, everyone is held in its thrall.

Sydney Pollack had a wide-ranging filmography that included one of the great studio comedies in Tootsie and a Best Picture winner in Out of Africa, but it’s hard to see They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? as anything other than his crowning achievement. Better known for his sure hand with actors than his technical skill or stylistic impact, Pollack nonetheless lets his camera roam the confines of the ballroom, restless and fidgety, as if it were an additional competitor. The images are stark, unsettling, confidently lensed. The dramatic moments jab you, absorbed into the soft tissue, bruising beneath the surface. Late in the game, Rocky proposes Gloria and Robert get married on the dance floor as a publicity stunt - making a mockery of those viewers secretly hoping, against all odds, these two could find their way to some sort of shared happiness - and when Gloria puts her foot down, the competition’s final penny drops devastatingly. “Maybe it’s just the whole damn world is like central casting,” Gloria comments, as she and Robert stand on the pier, their gaunt, haunted visages reminiscent of combat veterans. “They’ve got it all rigged before you even show up.” Fonda is quietly devastating. “I’m going to get off this merry-go-round. I’m so sick of the whole stinking thing.” The denouement is absolutely soul-shattering… rarely has a film’s title come into such traumatic focus. But it’s the closing shot that lingers, pulling us back into the ballroom’s inescapable embrace, Rocky’s parting words echoing long after this deeply harrowing picture fades to black.

“The marathon goes on… and on… and on… and on…”