MovieChat Forums > The Way We Were (1973) Discussion > What year does the film END? (with spoi...

What year does the film END? (with spoilers)

posted 15 years ago by movibuf1962
9 replies | jump to latest

Hardly a question worthy of an entire topic I know, but I'm curious...I know it's supposed to be the end of the war when the film opens (1945), and at least one mention is made of the year 1937 (the flashback period and the year of their commencement), but I don't think it's ever mentioned what year it is when it's all over. In the tear-jerking epilogue at the very end, we know there are 'Ban the Bomb' bills posted and Redford is writing for live television, but no year is mentioned- we don't even know how old their daughter is now. I kept making guesses that it was the mid-to-late 50's (or even the early 60's), but I couldn't be sure.

[–] murph24 15 years ago

Actually, The Way We Were opens in 1944, around the time of D-Day (as the dialogue in the radio play indicates). The film then flashes back to 1937 (when the Spanish Civil War was raging, and Mrs. Simpson married the Duke of Windsor), and then returns to 1944 ("Happy Rosh Hashanah!" Katie says when she presents Hubbell with a typewriter, putting the time frame around September) before proceeding to FDR's death in April of 1945. The war in Europe ended in May, and three months later in Japan.

The film then progresses through the HUAC "Hollywood Blacklist" hearings (which began in 1947), and - from what I can tell - ends around 1957. The "Golden Age" of live television (which Hubbell refers to) was at its peak in the mid to late 50s, and the American "Ban The Bomb" movement was gaining momentum in 1957 (the White House received petitions with 37,000 signatures that year from citizens opposed to nuclear testing, and the Federation of American Scientists also proposed a ban on nuclear testing in 1957).

[–] movibuf1962 15 years ago

Thank you. I KNEW I was gonna get a correction on something- I paraphrased a comment made in WIKI which just said that they were 'reunited at the end of World War II-' and my mind went to them meeting in 1945. I forgot about the whole sequence framed around the mention of Roosevelt's death- when we see one of the first divides between Katie and Hubbell.

[–] gcassidy2 12 years ago

I was catching the beginning of this movie, and the third shot caught me off guard. It has a USO office and an FDR IN '44 poster on either side of a movie marque. Then in the next scene I hear the radio actress mention D-Day. Whoa, I go, are we in that sweet spot between June and November of 1944? I go back to the previous scene to check the movies, and then came away confused. While they might be showing the Marx Brothers in Go West over 3 years after it came out, I don't think they could be showing Counterattack with Larry Parks (oh, and Paul Muni) a year before it came out on April 26, 1945.

[–] rquisenb 15 years ago

The end of the movie is earlier than the mid-50's, because none of the cars and cabs are as new as 1955, and because she wants to ban the A-bomb, not the H-bomb. In 1950, President Truman announced that development of the H-bomb would continue. So I would guess the end of the movie is around 1949, perhaps a couple of years after their baby was born.

[–] murph24 15 years ago

The film concludes long after 1949. When Katie becomes pregnant (and everyone is talking about the "Hollywood Ten"), the year is 1947. In fact, Hubbell's third revised draft for A Country Made Of Ice Cream reads September, 1947. So, what's ahead for Katie? Childbirth, divorce, relocation, remarriage, even a makeover - and it's highly unlikely all of that happened by 1949.

I wouldn't be concerned about not seeing 1955 cars in the film's final scene. I currently live in New York City, but that doesn't mean I'm only seeing 2009 models in the streets. In fact, only a small fraction of the cars I see are current models; most were manufactured sometime during the last fifteen years.

I agree the film is nebulous about the exact year the film concludes, but one thing is certain - "Ban The Bomb" was the slogan of the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), an organization that wasn't established until 1958. I'm not saying the phrase was never used before then, but as a slogan for nuclear disarmament it didn't come into general usage until the mid-to-late 1950s.

[–] jobimfan3000 15 years ago

The McCarthy Hearings were 1954 and the Ban the Bomb movement was big in New York about 1962 so that would make it about 8 years from the time they divorced until the see each other again at the end.

Darling, I am trouble of the most spectacular kind!

[–] murph24 15 years ago

The McCarthy Hearings were 1954...

The Way We Were dealt with the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings, the "Hollywood Ten" and the Hollywood blacklist - and the year all of this took place was 1947.

The McCarthy hearings took place seven years later and centered on communists and security risks in the Army. It's true they took place in 1954, but they had nothing to do with the entertainment industry or The Way We Were.

[–] EllisFowler 11 years ago

The McCarthy hearings took place seven years later and centered on communists and security risks in the Army. It's true they took place in 1954, but they had nothing to do with the entertainment industry or The Way We Were.

Quite right. The McCarthy hearings were Senate, Hollywood was the House. McCarthy had nothing to do with what was happening in Hollywood. I remember reading (in a Groucho Marx biography) an interview with Olivia de Havilland stating that everyone in Hollywood was outraged about the investigations and that she attended, with many fellow stars, a public protest that had been arranged. She said that she was shocked and deeply angered to notice that when it ended, the floor of the venue was thickly strewn with CP pamphlets. She realized they had been used as pawns to further an agenda.

If this interests you, read Elia Kazan's account of why he became a friendly witness, despite still being an ideological communist at the time, then watch On the Waterfront.

[–] leader-7 11 years ago

It probably ends in the early 50s -- because Hubbell is describing live tv production -- and that was tv's heyday.