Review: Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides on Criterion Blu-ray

Criterion’s Blu-ray provides a comprehensive window into Streisand’s creative process.

The Prince of TidesUnabashedly melodramatic yet psychologically complex, Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides is a throwback to—and a twist on—the so-called women’s films of the 1930s and ’40s. Adapted from Pat Conroy’s sprawling semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, the film concerns the stormy romance between a troubled middle-aged Southerner, Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte), and a stoic yet sensitive Manhattan psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein (Streisand). It’s very much the stuff of a Bette Davis-Irving Rapper weepie, but if the classic woman’s film centered on the inability of a strongly independent, yet often emotionally fragile, woman to find her place in the world—sometimes with the assistance of a paternalistic therapist, as in Rapper’s Now, VoyagerThe Prince of Tides centers on a man struggling to do the same.

Opening with picture-perfect helicopter shots of the sunset over a South Carolina marsh set to the soupy strains of James Newton Howard’s score as Tom delivers a sentimental voiceover about his childhood, The Prince of Tides instantly conjures a saccharine and nostalgic mood that it proceeds to dismantle over the course of its running time. Tom, a driftless former football coach living along the South Carolina coast, at first seems to be longing for a return to innocence, but we soon find that his childhood is in fact the source of all his troubles. Tasked by his overbearing mother, Lila Wingo (Kate Nelligan), to travel to New York to take care of his sister, Savannah (Melinda Dillon), who’s been hospitalized following a recent suicide attempt, Tom soon forms a close bond with Savannah’s therapist, Dr. Lowenstein, who’s keenly interested in investigating Savannah and Tom’s difficult upbringing.

The script, by Conroy and Becky Johnston, radically alters the course of the novel, which is primarily told through Tom’s flashbacks to his childhood. The film, instead, is centered on the relationship between Tom and Susan, which grows from professional to friendly to downright steamy. Nolte is unusually histrionic, frequently shouting and gesticulating in an overbearing manner, while Streisand is overly subdued, her attempts to portray Susan as professional and emotionally reserved coming off as chilly and distracted. But while their performances may lack for nuance, they conjure up a certain sweet-and-sour chemistry that allows their characters’ romance to feel vivid and watchable even during some of the film’s hammier sequences, such as a verbal tiff that escalates with Susan throwing a dictionary at Tom’s head.

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Unfortunately, when The Prince of Tides strays from this central relationship, it indulges corniness. A subplot involving Tom teaching Susan’s gangly son, Bernard (Jason Gould), how to play football is leaden and unconvincing, full of training sequences that have no feel for the sport. And the film is peppered with flashback sequences that are bathed in a wistful glow that belies the depths of Tom’s trauma. Streisand is clearly enamored of her film’s coastal shooting locations, what with all the sweeping crane shots and photogenic glimpses of shrimp boats cutting through sun-dappled waters, evoking the past with a superficial lusciousness that’s ill-suited to the wrenching pain that Tom ostensible feels inside.

In contrast to the noir-ish expressionism of many women’s films from the golden age of Hollywood, such as Now, Voyager, Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool, or Curtis Bernhardt’s Possessed, which sought to provide a visual complement to its characters’ unsettled psyches, Streisand consistently opts for a gauzy prettiness in the mold of Garry Marshall’s Beaches that reassures the audience that no matter how dark the subject matter may get, ultimately everything’s going to be okay. Meanwhile, Howard’s schmaltzy, overwrought score is like a warm blanket draped over the entire film, smothering whatever raw feeling might have been left over from the source novel, and the overall effect is tranquilizing in all the wrong ways.

Image/Sound

Boasting a new 4K restoration of the 35mm original camera negatives supervised by Barbra Streisand, The Prince of Tides looks positively sumptuous on Criterion’s Blu-ray release. The color grading of the restoration is particularly notable; all those scenic shots of South Carolina are vivid and vibrant, with deep oranges, purples, and blues clearly visible in the film’s picturesque opening sunset shots. The stereo soundtrack has also been remastered from the original 35mm master and provided in a lossless Dolby 2.0 surround track, and it’s beautifully balanced. Even in scenes where dialogue, voiceover, score, and sound effects are all playing at the same time, each element is always crystal-clear and easily distinguishable.

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Extras

Criterion reached deep into its archive for this release, recycling a number of special features produced for its laserdisc edition of the film more than 25 years ago while also providing a bevy of new extras. The audio commentary straddles the line between old and new: While primarily consisting of Streisand’s original 1991 commentary, it also features updates from the actress-director recorded in 2019. This commentary, as well as the disc’s other extensive features, makes a strong case for Streisand as—in Jerry Lewis’s phrase—a “total filmmaker.” Not only did she produce, direct, and star in the film, she also pioneered her own process that involved shooting multiple versions of the same scene and keeping the option to use any of them alive throughout the editing process. Streisand made tweaks to the final cut even after the film’s test screening, removing her own song from the end credits because it didn’t feel right, despite the audience’s favorable opinion of it. While these supplements may not convert the film’s skeptics, they make a strong case for Streisand as a uniquely holistic filmmaker.

This release also includes extensive behind-the-scenes material and other extras organized into four main sections that chronicle Streisand’s filmmaking process: Pat Conroy, Preproduction, Production, and Postproduction. The Pat Conroy section, which documents Streisand and Conroy’s close working relationship, includes a promotional interview with the author, handwritten letters from Conroy to Streisand, and grainy footage of the pair dancing the shag. The Preproduction materials include 8mm video excerpts of the audition process, rehearsal footage, and costume and makeup tests. Supplements under the Production header include storyboards, footage of violinist Pinchas Zukerman, a photo album, and 8mm video excerpts of alternate versions of scenes from the film. Under Postproduction, we get deleted scenes, original end credits featuring Streisand’s song “Places That Belong to You,” and 8mm video excerpts of the film’s test screening. There are also two interviews with Streisand, trailers for the film, and a puffy promotional featurette. The package also includes a fairly slight booklet essay by critic Bruce Eder originally written for Criterion in 1994.

Overall

Featuring a luscious new restoration and a bundle of extras, Criterion’s Blu-ray provides a comprehensive window into Streisand’s creative process.

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Score: 
 Cast: Nick Nolte, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Krabbé, Melinda Dillon, George Carlin, Jason Gould, Brad Sullivan  Director: Barbra Streisand  Screenwriter: Pat Conroy, Becky Johnston  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 132 min  Rating: R  Year: 1991  Release Date: March 31, 2020  Buy: Video

Keith Watson

Keith Watson is the proprietor of the Arkadin Cinema and Bar in St. Louis, Missouri.

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