Back in 2012, the folks at Houston
Cinema Arts Festival honored Robert Redford for his many and various achievements
as actor, director, producer, and film festival overlord. But let’s face it: For most folks, he remains — then
and now, first and last — an old school, much-beloved movie star.
Sure,
even the stargazers will agree, the guy has done a lot off-screen as a
passionate spokesperson for assorted environmental and sociopolitical causes.
And, yeah, he fully deserved his Oscar for directing Ordinary People. In fact, he probably should have gotten another one
for the even-better Quiz Show.
But
did you ever see him in…?
What
follows is an unapologetically subjective list of movies (and one TV drama) I
compiled in 2012 — and I’m repeating here today on the occasion of his 83rd
birthday — that I think demonstrate the diversity and quality of Redford’s work
as an actor.
NOTHING IN THE DARK
(1962):
In this classic half-hour episode of The Twilight Zone, Redford relies more on boyish good looks and
charm than heavy-duty thesping while playing a police officer who seeks help
from an eccentric old lady (Gladys Cooper) as he lies seriously wounded near
her front door. Trouble is, the lady is reluctant to allow anyone inside her
tenement apartment – even a wounded cop – because she’s convinced that, if she
lets down her guard, “Mr. Death” will appear in one of his many guises to kill
her with his touch. I don’t have to tell you what happens next, do I? Suffice
it to say that Redford is well cast and, thanks in large part to the
aforementioned looks and charm, extremely convincing.
BAREFOOT IN THE
PARK (1967): This bright
and breezy adaptation of Neil Simon’s once-ubiquitous stage comedy about New
York newlyweds may be a particularly pleasant surprise for any first-time
viewer too young to remember the days when co-stars Redford and Jane Fonda were
sleek and sexy rising stars best known as actors, not activists. Don’t get me
wrong: I’m certainly not criticizing either icon for his or her politics. But a
large part of the movie’s enduring charm is its quaintness as an amusing
artifact from a more innocent age.
DOWNHILL RACER (1969): “How fast must a man go to get from where he’s at?” That question,
provocatively raised as the movie’s original advertising tagline, seems to
serve as an unspoken mantra for Redford’s obsessively self-directed Dave Chappelet, a small-town skier
dedicated to earning Olympic gold. Chappelet’s humorless, tightly focused
intensity doesn’t win him many friends among his teammates – even his coach
(Gene Hackman) doesn’t really like the guy – and he seems incapable expressing
any emotion but the joy of victory. Which, of course, is what makes Redford’s
implosive performance all the more fascinating. (Director Michael Ritchie later teamed
with his star for another sharply observed movie about competition – The Candidate.)
BUTCH CASSIDY AND
THE SUNDANCE KID (1969): It’s easy to
forget that, back in the day, many critics were downright frosty toward director
George Roy Hill’s semi-revisionist, seriocomic Western. (Academy voters, however,
gave it four Oscars, including awards for William Goldman’s screenplay and Best
Song – “Raindrops Keep
Falling on My Head.”) But even the naysayers
couldn’t deny the immensely appealing chemistry generated by relative newcomer
Redford and established superstar Paul Newman as two rollicking, wisecracking
outlaws who can’t ride far or fast enough to escape their own obsolescence.
Their casting was, quite simply, a match made in movie heaven.
LITTLE FAUSS AND
BIG HALSEY (1970): Redford
fearlessly portrays an irredeemable son of a bitch (arguably for the last time
in his movie career, unless you count Captain
America: Winer Soldier) in director Sidney J. Furie’s criminally
under-rated road movie about two motorcycle racers – a naïve novice (Michael J.
Pollard) and a studly braggart (Redford) -- who go nowhere fast while trying to
transcend their status as small-timers. Redford’s Halsey is such a smugly and
shamelessly manipulative jerk that, eventually, even Pollard’s timid Fauss rejects
him. In typically self-centered fashion, Halsey responds as though unjustly
affronted: “If this is friendship, I am aghast.” To which Fauss replies: “I
never said I was your friend, Halsey. I don’t even fuckin’ like you.” When I saw this flick for the first time in a theater,
the audience roared its approval of Fauss’ put-down.
THE CANDIDATE (1972): Every political junkie’s very favorite movie seems more prescient
with each passing year as it vividly details the image-buffing,
compromise-demanding process through which a handsome young Senate hopeful
(Redford, at the absolute top of his game) is transformed, with his reluctant
acquiescence, from idealistic long-shot to pragmatic campaigner. Redford’s anxious
query after his character manages an upset victory – “What do we do now?” – is
one of the greatest curtain lines in all of movie history. But it’s only a
small sample of the pitch-perfect dialogue in the Oscar-winning screenplay by Jeremy Larner, a novelist
(Drive, He Said) who gained unique
insights into the U.S. political process while working as a speechwriter for
Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign.
THE STING (1973): Four years after they went out in a blaze of glory as Butch and
Sundance, Redford and Paul Newman reteamed with director George Roy Hill for
this Oscar-winning seriocomic caper about two Depression Era con artists – a
sly old pro (Newman) and an eager young grifter (Redford)– who plot an
elaborate revenge against the menacing mob boss (Robert Shaw) who murdered the
younger man’s mentor. Redford hits the perfect balance of righteous anger and
self-awareness when he explains why he’ll settle for conning, rather than
killing, the object of his ire: “’Cause I don’t know enough about killing to
kill him.” But, truth to tell, he’s never more believable than in the scene
where Shaw’s intimidating badass unexpectedly punches him. There’s a moment –
just a moment – when Redford’s expression reads: “Geez, he does remember this
is just a movie, doesn’t he?”
THE WAY WE WERE (1973): Beginning with 1966’s This
Property is Condemned – and continuing, rather more auspiciously, with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Three Days of the Condor (1975), and the
Oscar-winning Out of Africa (1985) –
Redford and director Sydney
Pollack developed a fruitful working relationship and a mutual admiration
society. Many critics (including yours truly) might insist that The Way We Were wasn’t the finest of their
collaborations. But it’s impossible to deny the irresistible and enduring
appeal of this bittersweet romantic drama about a WASPy golden boy (Redford)
and a fiery left-wing activist (Barbra Streisand) who are united by their love,
but divided by their politics. Redford manages the difficult feat of remaining
likable, if not admirable, even as his character, a novelist turned TV
scriptwriter, gradually is revealed as a man who so easily and often compromises his ideals that you wind up wondering if there’s anything other
than ambition driving him. (Shades of Downhill
Racer!)
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976): Redford
served as producer as well as co-star of director Alan J. Pakula’s potently
low-key and meticulously detailed adaptation of the nonfiction best-seller
written by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein about
their doggedly determined investigation into various aspects of the Watergate
scandal. (Screenwriter William Goldman won a well-deserved second Oscar for his
part in cinematically translating what many thought was an unfilmable book.)
The movie abounds in memorable moments. But Redford’s very best scene by far is
the one in which his character
makes a cold call to a GOP official, and is so amazed when the official himself
actually answers the phone that he’s momentarily lost for words. He vamps, none
too effectively, by twice introducing himself as “Bob Woodward of the
Washington Post.” If you’ve ever worked as a journalist, and you’re at all
honest, you can’t help thinking while watching this scene: “Been there. Done
that.”
HAVANA (1990): OK, it’s my list, so they’re my choices. And even though I realize
this is a minority report, Havana –
Redford’s last collaboration with the late, great Sydney Pollack – has always
impressed me as a forgivably flawed, ultimately affecting attempt to do a Casablanca-style romantic drama set in
1958 Cuba. And I have taken an unreasonable amount of delight in savoring
Redford’s dawn-of-middle-age charisma as Jack Weil, a cynical gambler who’s
entirely aware that he’s been at the tables too long. (“A funny thing happened
to me last week,” he says, only half-jokingly. “I realized I wasn't going to
die young.”) Will he be capable of doing the right thing when he falls for an
idealistic beauty (Lena Olin) whose revolutionary husband (Raul Julia) needs
her sweet inspiration? What do you
think? Here’s looking at you, Bob.
