Mill Creek Entertainment Looks To May 07 For The Blu-ray Release Of Director Spotlight: Sydney Pollack Featuring Castle Keep And Bobby Deerfield

Mill Creek Entertainment announced this past week that it’s next Blu-ray “Director Spotlight” release will arrive on May 7.   This takes the form of Director Spotlight: Sydney Pollack and features the double-bill of Castle Keep and Bobby Deerfield.

Sydney Pollack was the Best Director and Best Picture-winner (producer) for Out of Africa in 1986 and was also nominated Best Director for both Tootsie (1983) and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1970) … he also received Best Picture nominations (as producer) for Tootsie, Michael Clayton (2008) and The Reader (2009).   

Well before these cinematic hits, he teamed up with Burt Lancaster for back-to-back films in 1968 and 1969.   The first of these was The Scalphunters, a proto-Western in that the action takes place prior to the Civil War and similar to Jeremiah Johnson in terms of period (Pollack would direct Jeremiah Johnson in 1972 — one of seven films starring Robert Redford).

In 1969, Pollack adapted author William Eastlake’s 1965 novel, Castle Keep, which is loosely based on Eastlake’s experiences in World War II (he would receive the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for action at the Battle of the Bulge).

Here, Lancaster plays Major Abraham Falconer, who has been cutoff in the winter of 1944 and has just six men to defend a castle on Belgian/French border.  It is an important location in that it is on a direct route (from the north) for the German’s to make a move on Bastogne … they hold out as best they can, delaying the enemy, but one by one they are killed (only one survives).

Teamed with Castle Keep is Pollack’s 1977 film adaptation of writer Eric Maria Remargue’s 1961 novel, “Heaven has No Favorites,” which was retitled for the screen as Bobby Deerfield.

This racecar romantic/drama teams Al Pacino with Marthe Keller, who had just come off starring roles in Marathon Man and Black Sunday.