The Slender Thread

In this tense psychological drama, Sidney Poitier is outstanding as a psychiatric student counselling Anne Bancroft’s distraught patient.

  • Director

    Sydney Pollack

  • With

    Sidney Poitier, Anne Bancroft, Telly Savalas

  • USA 1965. 99min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    12A

Following his historic Best Actor Oscar win in 1963 for Lilies of the Field, Poitier joined Anne Bancroft in Sydney Pollack’s ambitious directorial debut. He is riveting as psychiatry student Alan Newell, who must use every tactic he has to keep a despondent woman, who has swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, on a crisis-centre hotline long enough for the authorities to rescue her.

The screening of The Slender Thread on Monday 27 January 20:35 NFT2 will be introduced by season programmer Jonathan Ali.