Pouring the Isle of “You smile all the time” in Titanic Chugged Cruiser: ‘The Way We Were’—-A Decanter of Obituaryfest Through Filmic Literature
Z I Mahmud, Alma Mater, English Department, University of Delhi, India
Silver screen mountain lion of Utah—Robert Redford and lioness glamour girl—Barbra Streisand manifest character arcs within claustrophobic debonair … As Rooseveltian romantic lovers, the chameleon couple is exposed to being infested and pestered through an ensemble of aural-visual on-screen framework enculturated within psychodrama ; thus marooned within the shipwreck of unamnesiac anathema. Sydney Pollack embodies francophone aboriginality and diasporic expatriate postnationalist postcoloniality Bunyanesquing— [Bunyanesquing is a neologism, insomuch and inasmuch of psychologizing and sexualizing filmic repertoire and that is this line of argument can be phrased as projections of extended personalities from curatorial directorship perspectivity] a laurel wreathed in romantic tenor filmic production. Erens, Patricia, and Sydney Pollack. “SYDNEY POLLACK: THE WAY WEARE.” Film Comment 11, no. 5
(1975): 24–29.
Katie Morosky puts forth the rhetoric of Rooseveltistic welfarism and unionization —raking over the coals anti-Cold War tensions and anti-McCarthyism in controversial conversation with fellow travelers and socialist compatriots of the motion picture industry.
Without cineversing hat on a hat, Barbra Streisand roasts arguments to watch their melting faces drip off their worthless faces as explained in the article by Matelski, Marilyn J. “‘The Way We Were. . .’ and Wish We Weren’t: A Hollywood Memoir of Blacklisting in America.” Studies in Popular Culture 24, no. 2 (2001): 79–98. Herein the interpolation of Rooseveltistic sympathizer cast Streisand in highlights of liberalistic Americanism.
Her husband is dead! Dead!!! Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt went down into the mines. And when they asked her why, she said, “I am my husband’s legs.” Did you tell the crippled jokes, too? Is there anything that isn’t a joke to you people?”
Hubbell and Morosky star studded casts pacifist egalitarianism transition toward flashforwards of retrospective grain of salt : ‘but making a blessed buck’ and ‘PEOPLE—are more important than any goddamn witch-hunt’.
Crystalline Jewishness of Katie Morosky [Barbra Streisand] surmountingly triumphs with conquest of a bagel of appreciation. Because of her creditworthy work ethics, passion, intelligence and marvel —- heartmelting observance of Jewish American lady persona in Hubbell Gardner [Robert Redford] backstage is fruitified in PICKETTE, SAMANTHA. “‘When You’re a Funny Girl’: Confirming and Complicating Accepted Cultural Images of Jewish Femininity in the Films of Barbra Streisand.” In Jews and Gender, edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon, 245–70. Purdue University Press, 2021. Both masculinization and feminization are characteristic traits of wave of womanist revolutionary blueprint of Jewishness and Samantha Pickette situates Streisand framework consolidating ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ to undermine ideals of a hierarchical society governed by hegemonic gendered expectations.
However, commie to saddie stock caricature imperils this governance of femininity. For the sake of argumentative emphasis, castration threat faced by the heroine is an unheimlich torrent in the vein of imaginary eugenics agrophobia—- superimposed upon the hero’s egomaniacal masculinity and psychic virility.
‘You and me. Not causes. Not principles’—-depoliticizes her political partisanship and disenfranchises female empowerment. After all, undertones and undercurrents of power struggles derelict the relationship between the couple with Katie’s clash of counterback, “Hubbell, people are their principles.” For Hubbell Katie’s reformer sage-like personality for thriving and striving the way of the world is a utopian idealism. Despite platonic romance Hubbell-Katie is a doomed pair—- stranded in dysfunctional marriage—– recoils into a shuddered wedding. If Katie doesn’t sell her soul for the sake of the American dream as extrapolated from the literary critic Letty
Cottin Pogrebin’s point of view, then I wish to argue what Samantha Pickette’s illustrative scholarship eschews. Hubbell Americanizes Judaism to the hinges and fringes of Christianity for the sake of the American Dream by permutation of plot twist and storyline. The transposition of a divorce petition springs forth within the cellar of the fourth wall.
Wasn’t Samantha Pickette walking on egg shells with confession in the performative gender of bolstering feminine body polity that after all she shrugs off her standpoint in the teleological ontology tracing Barbra Streisand’s happy endings— as transgressive nature of
feisty womanist Jewishness betide through poetic justice in the consequential aftermath of breaking off ritualization of interreligious institution.
Later the erudite scholarly critic nails the coffin in Katie Morosky’s everywoman struggles for restoration of family building by sheltering in the refuge of lyrical poetic fairy tale tradition of angel of the hearth. Dissolution of marriage coincided since salt of the earth Hubbell wanted care-free reliable family reconciliation within screen writing career; however Hubbell’s angel of the hearth was always waiting for the next shoe to drop in this mores of the nuclear disarmament campaign. In a nutshell, nostalgic glorification behind succumbment of the rack and ruin pair is likewise opening a can of worms amongst star-crossed and unrequited lovers.
The Way We Were transcendentally nostalgizes as symbolic epitome —in the heartfelt memoiristic reminiscences of Barbra Streisand for being cultural lightning in a bottled remembrance—memorial services of star-studded goodbye Hollywood has seen in decades. We are talking about a man who didn’t just act. He discovered talents. He nurtured careers. He changed the entire landscape of independent filmmaking. After all, as much as you can and as long as you can, philosophy floods with the memorabilia chemistry of this on-screen
couple—outlasting impressions of idolization of the entertainment industry alongside film studies and film criticism. ‘The double helix of the star wattage heyday lionizes tussled blonde locks, granite jaw and million dollar smiles’ as star cast reviewed by Robert Redford’s Funeral, Barbara Streisand’s TRIBUTE Is STUNNING!
Robert Redford elevated the powerhouse actress like Streisand through the enduring magical caprice of the popcorn classic The Way We Were. ‘That film, that performance, that chemistry between Redford and Streisand, it captured something eternal about love and loss, and the way time changes everything … As Barbra Streisand takes her leather gloved hand and pushes her summer boy Sandie blonde hair from Robert Redford’s forehead and he clasps her
wrist gently pulling her into a final embrace. An inevitable farewell, the audience sobbed.’
Redford resurrects in her epitaphic memorial as the times she remembered the fun they had commenting upon the Oprah Winfrey interviewing him, “I remember liking her energy and her spirit. It was wonderful to play off of. I also really enjoyed kidding her. She was fun to kid.”
From touching every corner of the entertainment industry, the actors he worked with, the directors he discovered and causes he championed…devotion to conservation, life, vision and
lasting contribution to Utah…feelings he inspired, dreams he encourages, independent voices he amplified through Sundance, lives he touched, careers he launched, the storytelling craft…loyalty, trustworthiness, principles, looks, commitment to excellence… and so on and so forth. Streisand’s onscreen heroization of Redford shall outlive real marriages through the relationship strands between Katie-Hubbell pair—-beauty with substance and stardom with
purpose helming the filmworld—-recognizing his worth, celebrating his talent, maintaining the everlasting bond throughout decades.
Photography Acknowledgement
THE WAY WE WERE Starring Barbra Streisand & Robert Redford. October 16, 1973. Picture, taken on set during the filming in 1972. Eoghan. Barbra Streisand Fan’s World Page
Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, who starred together in 1973’s ‘The Way We Were’.
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Robert Redford In ‘The Way We Were’
Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford sit smiling looking forward in a scene from the film ‘The Way We Were’, 1973. (Photo by Columbia Pictures/Getty Images)
Streisand & Redford In ‘The Way We Were’
View of American actors Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford as they lie in bed in a scene from the film ‘The Way We Were’ (directed by Sydney Pollack), Los Angeles, California, 1972. (Photo
by Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty Images)
Redford & Streisand In ‘The Way We Were’
View of American actors Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand as they face one another in a scene from the film ‘The Way We Were’ (directed by Sydney Pollack), Los Angeles, California, (Photo by Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty Images) 1972.
Z. I. Mahmud [email: zimahmud_anan@yahoo.com] is a Bangladeshi scholar, creative writer, and B.A. (Honours) alumnus in English from Satyawati College, University of Delhi. He has recently submitted an essay for the Keats Shelley Memorial Prize titled, The Utopian Enlightenment of Romantic Sublime Dissolves Into Dystopian Apocalypse Within Mary Shelley’s Last Man. His research and creative work explore literature’s intersections with history, imagination, and cultural reception. Mahmud’s abstract, Dungeon-Castle and Demonic Downfall: Traumatizing Horroresque Gothicization of the Medievalist Halloween, has been selected for panel presentation at the virtual conference Confound the Time: Reception in Medieval & Early Modern Studies, 24–25 January 2026.