1973 · Behind the Songs
The Oscar-winning theme that defined romantic nostalgia.
The recording in context
“The Way We Were” was written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman as the theme for the 1973 film of the same name, starring Streisand and Robert Redford. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and spent three weeks at number one in early 1974. It became Streisand’s signature — the ballad against which all her later ballads were measured.
Listen closely
The melody is a marvel of construction: it rises and falls like a memory surfacing and receding. Listen to how Streisand handles the famous opening — soft, almost conversational, as if she’s thinking aloud. Then notice the control as the song builds: the voice opens up without ever breaking, the emotion intensifying through precision rather than volume.
What makes the record endure is its ambiguity. The lyric remembers a love that was beautiful and impossible in equal measure, and Streisand sings both truths at once — tenderness and regret braided together. The final lines land like a door closing softly on a room you’ll never enter again.
Decades later, the song remains the gold standard of the romantic film theme — imitated endlessly, matched rarely. It works because Streisand treats memory not as comfort but as something bittersweet and alive, still capable of stinging.