The Slender Thread

“When a woman's emotions sway on a slender thread, expect anything…”

Alan Newell (Sidney Poitier), a Seattle college student, wants only to get through his volunteer shift at the crisis center, a quiet night alone by the phone. Then Inga Dyson (Anne Bancroft) calls to say she has swallowed a bottle of pills, and he must keep her talking while others search for her. Sydney Pollack, in his first feature, builds the film around that one open line, a stranger's voice and the listener who will not hang up.