The Slender Thread (1965)

Directed by

Sydney Pollack

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 38m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 53 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A college student volunteers at a suicide hotline and gets a call from a woman who has already taken a lethal dose of pills. He works with a psychiatrist and a detective to try to find her husband and save her life. The story shifts between the phone call and flashbacks showing what led her to this point.

tenseurgentsomberintimatesuspensefulemotionalgroundedrealistic

What happens

The Slender Thread is a 1965 American drama film starring Anne Bancroft and Sidney Poitier. It was the first feature-length film directed by future Oscar-winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack. Poitier portrays Alan, a college student who is volunteering at Seattle's then-new Crisis Clinic, a suicide prevention hotline. Shortly after beginning his solo duty on the night shift, Alan receives a call from a woman named Inga (Bancroft) who says she has just taken a lethal dose of pills and wants to talk to someone before she dies. The story line follows the efforts of Alan, a psychiatrist (Telly Savalas) and a detective (Ed Asner) to locate Inga and her husband Mark (Steven Hill), who is on a local fishing vessel. Various flashback scenes depict the events that led Inga to make the attempt on her life. The film was inspired by a Life magazine article by Shana Alexander about actual events. The film is set in Seattle, and includes scenes shot on location, as well as an opening tracking aerial shot of Seattle circa 1965. This movie is noted for the physical tracing of the call to find Inga (Bancroft) before she dies. Throughout the movie, the call is traced by hand through several electro-mechanical telephone central office switches which leads to the hotel where Inga was staying (at the Hyatt House, since demolished) near the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• A Rage to Live (1965)
• Runaway Girl (1965)
• I Saw What You Did (1965)
• Game for Three Losers (1965)
• Соба 17 (1965)
• My Blood Runs Cold (1965)
• Sylvia (1965)
• Brainstorm (1965)