People from all walks of life will flock to the limited chance of a high-dollar prize amid an economic depression, even at the expense of their own soul. That’s the overarching message of 1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, an excoriating social satire and the source of incredible, suffocating stress for any who dare to watch it. The word “satire,” by the way, should not be misconstrued as “funny” in any fashion, as screenwriters Robert E. Thompson and James Poe (adapting a 1935 novel by Horace McCoy) approach the material with a stark, unsparing seriousness and barreling momentum toward bleak hopelessness. This is the Great Depression, after all, not any old standard market recession, and the desperation of the people who come to the dance marathon is so strong that even a fatal cardiac event can barely move them.
The current year of 2023 is a strange and perfect time to revisit a movie experience like this one, especially as we are reaching the end of the so-called “labor summer.” As the film, transportation, and package delivery industries try to negotiate in fairness with the soulless executives who would treat them as numbers on a spreadsheet, one can imagine that the people on the ground, if driven to the point of desperation shared by the cast of characters in director Sydney Pollack’s film, might try something as asinine as a non-stop dance marathon. We’ve by now heard horror stories about people dying or suffering infections from something as simple as a contest involving putting hands on a truck for hours on end. Add constant bodily motion into the mix, and one gets catastrophe in return.
The ensemble of characters here is deep and rich, with each of the principals receiving much more than mere inclusion in the dance marathon being held on the Santa Monica Pier during the Great Depression. In a subtly powerful framing device, the action is being told, under mysterious circumstances, to a judge in an anonymous courtroom by Robert Syvertson (Michael Sarrazin), a homeless man who took part in the dance marathon in what increasingly feels to him like another world and life. The court proceeding is an ominous background to be sure, since the marathon begins innocently enough and the dancers-to-be are mostly unassuming. The other prominent dancer here is Gloria (Jane Fonda), whose partner is disqualified on account of bronchitis.
What follows is a journey into the dark heart of a ruthless capitalistic system, captured in microcosm. The goal of the dance marathon is to move constantly, for as many hours as possible, up to and (for some) beyond what is humanly possible. At the end of it all, says the event promoter and emcee Rocky, the winner will receive $1,500 in silver dollars – nearly $30,000 adjusting for inflation today. Even Rocky, an alcoholic and often out-of-control hurricane of a man played by Academy Award winner Gig Young, holds a dark secret about the outcome of this marathon: the winner’s expenses will be deducted from their prize, leaving them with almost nothing after all this effort.
The film’s sense of “story” is limited to this contest and the various fallings-out or small victories of the contestants. Within that narrow scope, however, Pollack explores a vast universe of fascinating personalities and brittle human frailty. That extends to the other contestants here, too, including Red Buttons as an older sailor named Harry, whose relative age in comparison to the other contestants can only lead down one path, Robert Fields as eventual deserter Joel, and Bruce Dern and Bonnie Bedelia as married couple James and Ruby, the latter of whom is pregnant. The final contestant of note, hailing from across the pond in London, is aspiring actress Alice, played by Susannah York in a performance of phenomenal emotional candor and power, as a woman who suffers a nervous breakdown in a scene that could sear itself onto one’s subconscious.
Complications arise throughout, beginning at the top with the event’s hired “doctors” who are on staff exclusively to downplay any physical ailments that arise, which obviously runs into a major problem when a death occurs at the tail end of the marathon. Psychological fracturing begins as each pair contends with the others for the minor privileges afforded to each of them. One contestant leaves the marathon, throwing the entire, delicate establishment into even more chaos and turmoil.
This is all obviously a stand-in (hence, the word “satire” technically fits) for the state of a workforce amid incredible executive and market pressure, a fact that Pollack embraces without pretension or by pulling any punches. The final scenes, in which the souls of the Sarrazin and Fonda characters have been entirely hollowed out by their participation, are devastating, particularly as one of them invokes the film’s loaded title as a form of both justification and evasion of guilt in a non-legal sense. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a shattering experience, matched only by the fearless economy of its filmmaking.
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