They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

I've always had a little bit of a problem with the Jane Fonda persona. She often seems to play the noble cynic who thinks she knows more about life than anyone else in the room. She utilizes her superiority by demeaning the more "naive" individuals. She is rebelling against society, but it seems like she rebels mere for the sake of rebelling. All that is to say, I didn't really like her character in Sydney Pollack's, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? But what makes her performace a little bit remarkable is that despite all of that, I still sympathised with her. The setting is the early 1930's - the middle of the depression - somewhere in the Los Angeles area. A bunch of Hollywood extra's who must have nothing else, enter a dance competition for the chance to win $1,500. The last couple standing wins. Throughout the course of the competition they have occasional breaks to rest, eat, or take a shower, but for the most part, it's dance till you drop. Dance competition, doesn't sound that bad, right? Wrong. This is one of the most painfully, grueling comepetitions I've ever seen on screen. When they start going beyond hour 1,000 (over 40 days!), you really have to question their sanity. And some of them lose it. Red Buttons is enjoyable as an aging sailor who's been in more than one of these contests, and Gig Young is a stand out as the announcer who, while almost torturing the contestants because the depression-era audience wants to see people in a worse spot than they are, still manages breathe humanity into a character that could easily have become very one-dimensional. I have to admit, it wasn't until the very end shot that I realized that this competition is meant as a metaphor for life. I enjoyed the film and its many strength's, but I also found it to be overly cynical and simplistic in its view of life. But hey, it's probably worth it just for the title.