...But that's unless he gets help there in time!....

He is Sidney Poitier; She is Anne Bancroft, and their entire interaction throughout this mostly gripping drama about a race against time is on the telephone. Poitier works as a volunteer at a Suicide Prevention Hotline, and Bancroft is going to be the most challenging call he ever takes. She's messed up from her husband (Steven Hill) finding out that their young son was actually fathered by another man, and in addition to other insecurities has taken an overdose of barbiturates. Poitier has 30 minutes to find her or she will not make it. Not only is time running out, but so are the attempts to locate where her call is coming from. Bancroft, wallowing in both self pity and the cruelty of life, has her story told through flashback, and goes to great lengths to show the many layers of this fascinating character. In spite of her self-pity, she is never so pathetic that you loose interest in her. Poitier shows at great length how difficult it is to play a character basically being a "reactor". Audiences of the 1960's really came to like him because of his incredible humanity no matter what character he played. He joined the ranks of such previous "every man" such as James Stewart, Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda.

Telly Savalas and Ed Asner appear in major supporting roles (yes, Kojak and Lou Grant in the same film, although they do not appear together) with Greg Jarvis as Bancroft's loving son. Sydney Pollack shows the intensity and humanity of his many classic films, although this has a few moments of eye rolling 60's clichés. Still, with two actors of stage background letting themselves go, it is never dull, and it makes you really care about the outcome. Bancroft and Poitier are two actors excellent both in method and technique, and are helped by a gripping screenplay by the legendary Stirling Sipphilant. With adult dramas such as "Darling" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" testing the production code, Hollywood was really escaping from the themes it had previously not allowed to dramatize. While this may not be considered a classic, it will leave you almost breathless with a race where running or car chases are absolutely not involved.

Sidney Poitier is a college student who volunteers once a week at a suicide hotline clinic. When he checks in one evening, he gets his coffee, sharpens his pencil, looks at his files, and answers the phone. "I need to talk to someone," a husky-voiced woman requests. The woman, Anne Bancroft, has taken pills. Sidney tries to keep her talking long enough so that he can trace her call and find out where she is.

The Slender Thread is a fantastic thriller that takes a very simple story and manages to completely engross the audience by the potential outcome. Stirling Silliphant's screenplay is very interesting, and Sydney Pollack, in his first theatrical film, creates a fantastically tense atmosphere. Since the film cuts back and forth between Sidney Poitier in the clinic and Anne Bancroft's flashbacks, it would be easy for the story to drag or seem uneven. Pollack's direction keeps the main goal in sight and constantly moves towards it in every scene. I guarantee you'll be so enthralled by the film, the ending will come too soon.

Sidney gives an excellent performance, trying desperately to save Anne's life even though he's a once-a-week volunteer. He's nervous, ill-prepared, and doesn't always play by the rules. Rather than acting as a bottomless well of human kindness, he gets frustrated as the time ticks on. He—and the audience—becomes emotionally involved with Anne, and before the end, everyone in and watching the film will be hanging by a slender thread, waiting and anxious to find out what will happen!

...even if it couldn't be made today, at least the way it was made then.

It was a terrific suspense movie that had the added benefit of showing Poitier in a totally race-neutral role as young psychology student Alan Newell who is volunteering at the local suicide hotline crisis center on a night that he has every reason to believe will be quiet...and then Inga Dyson (Ann Bancroft) calls him. She has just taken a bottle of barbiturates, does not want to be rescued, but does want to talk. So Alan has to keep his cool and keep Inga on the line long enough to be found, and she only has about 90 minutes to live.

What makes this movie totally anachronistic today is that the entire plot centers around a coordinated effort by scores of public servants in Seattle to trace Inga's phone number and save her before the pills do their job. Of course it would take about 10 seconds for the line to be traced today, which would kind of do away with the suspense.

The suspense is that her call COULD be traced, but it requires the huge telephone company building with countless thousands of connecting plugs and wires that had to be narrowed down, plus the police and fire departments and the State Department of Motor Vehicles, in order to locate the caller's number and where she was calling from. It was like a giant public works department that gave employment to pretty much every proactive player we see in the movie.

In the character development department we have a conversation between Alan an Inga in which we see how she got to the point of despair. It is one part of unforgiveness on her husband's part for a deed done before they were ever married, too much time on Inga's hands one day as the husband continues to stay emotionally detached from her as though she is some unclean thing, the fact that she wanted to talk to somebody about how she felt but could find nobody who would, and the final straw involves the death of an injured bird that is regarded callously by those around her while she tries to help.

In addition to Poitier and Bancroft, Steven Hill gives a chilling and highly credible performance as the unforgiving husband who's driven Bancroft to her suicide attempt. He's such a creepy character that he makes us almost want to force him to swallow those pills instead, and that's a sign that he plays the part to perfection.

Highly recommended because the emotions still ring true even if the technology is long gone.