Robert Redford appeared like he walked out of the ocean to change into a Hollywood god. He was bodily flawless. Pacific blue eyes, salt-bleached hair, a pleasant surfer-boy squint. Born in Santa Monica to a milkman and a housewife, his first reminiscence was of sliding off his mom’s lap on the Aero Theatre as a toddler and working towards the sunshine, inflicting such a ruckus that the projectionist needed to cease the movie.
He positively grew as much as seize the flicks’ consideration. He wasn’t simply telegenic however gifted, though that wasn’t a requirement for stardom when he emerged within the late ’50s when the trade was scooping up hunks like him by the bucket for tv and B-movies. All a male ingenue wanted to do was smile and kiss the lady. It might have been really easy to do this a pair occasions and wind up doing it without end. You may perceive why so many forgotten actors made that deal, with out realizing that without end can result in a quick retirement.
But when Redford had sensed at 2 years outdated that he was meant to be onscreen, by his 20s, he insisted he’d solely do it on his personal phrases. At 27, with practically zero title recognition, he horrified his then-agent by turning down a $10,000-a-week TV gig as a strait-laced psychiatrist to do a Mike Nichols theater manufacturing for simply $110. His rejection of the straightforward cash was an uncommon selection, notably for a cash-strapped father of two.
To understand Redford absolutely, now we have to applaud not solely the work he did however the easy, feel-good roles he rejected. He might have change into a celeb with out breaking a sweat because the battle hero, the jock, the husband, the cowboy, the American supreme made incarnate. But, he had the uncommon skill to sidestep what audiences thought we wished from him to as a substitute give us one thing we didn’t know we would have liked: egocentric victors (“Downhill Racer”), self-destructive veterans (“The Great Waldo Pepper”) and tragic males who did the whole lot proper and nonetheless failed (2013’s “All Is Lost”).
In spirit, Redford by no means strayed removed from the teenager insurgent he’d been — a truant who’d skipped college, stole booze and crashed race automobiles — and the unconventional artist he hurled himself into turning into by quitting the whole lot conventional (the soccer crew, his fraternity, school altogether) to maneuver to Paris the place he took up oil portray and marched towards the Soviets. He might need excelled on the sleazy roles that made Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino well-known. On the surface, he knew they didn’t match, both.
Generally Redford stated no even after I want he’d have stated sure. Think about if he’d agreed to face off towards Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” As an alternative, he advised Nichols he’d slightly tangle with Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate,” solely to be rejected as too good-looking for the function. “Can you honestly imagine a guy like you having difficulty seducing a woman?” Nichols advised him.
As an alternative, Redford used his all-American beauty to make us query our flattering picture of ourselves. Within the 1974 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” he was the primary particular person you’d consider to play the title function as a result of he absolutely understood the purpose of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s e-book — the way it felt to symbolize our nation’s complete picture of success whereas understanding it’s a phony put-on. I think about him making a satan’s cut price along with his face, vowing that he gained’t conceal behind goofy accents and stunt wigs the way in which different too-handsome oddballs do, if he’s allowed to make use of his attraction like a Computer virus.
If there’s one factor that unites his roles, from 1966’s “The Chase” to “Lions for Lambs,” it’s his willingness to present the display his full charisma — to let audiences stare at him for the entire working time of a film — so long as we’ll comply with ask what’s lurking in his underbelly. Most frequently, we’ll discover pissed off idealism simply in the meanwhile it begins to bitter.
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The movies of the Sixties and ’70s that made Redford an icon principally cleave into two classes: scamps and truth-seekers. (The latter can overlap with suckers and stooges.) His antihero crooks in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting” captured one thing in our nationwide id, our not-so-secret perception that it’s OK to interrupt a number of guidelines to get forward — that we are able to forgive a sin if we just like the sinner. I like how these motion pictures provide you with a responsible little tingle about rooting for Redford even when it means scratching off a few the Ten Commandments. (Thou shalt not steal until you’re Robert Redford, who acquired away with it all through 2018’s “The Old Man and the Gun.”)
Recently, the Redford roles I’ve been desirous about are those the place his all-American attraction makes us study all of America, good and dangerous. The 2 that immediately soar to thoughts are his pair of political thrillers: “Three Days of the Condor,” by which he performs a CIA agent on the run from his personal co-workers, and “All the President’s Men,” by which he doggedly uncovers the Watergate scandal. Each movies imagine within the energy of getting the reality out to the press; neither is so naive as to assume the reality alone will save the day.
However let’s not overlook “The Candidate,” a film that has Redford as underqualified political scion Invoice McKay, pressed to run for governor of California. “He’s not going to get his ass kicked — he’s cute,” his father (Melvyn Douglas) says. In the meantime, his personal marketing campaign crew cares extra concerning the size of his sideburns than concepts in his head. Launched within the 1972, 5 years into former actor Ronald Reagan’s personal governorship, the film hammers residence that superficiality is likely to be democracy’s downfall — and the stakes are larger than who’s Hollywood‘s latest heartthrob.
Vice President Dan Quayle once said “The Candidate” inspired him, triggering its screenwriter Jeremy Larner to dash this off in an op-ed: “Mr. Quayle, this was not a how-to movie, it was a watch-out movie. And you are what we should be watching out for!”
In his later years, Redford became a filmmaker himself and I can picture him pulling Brad Pitt aside on the set of “A River Runs Through It” to whisper: You don’t have to remain in that pretty-boy field. Be happy to get bizarre. As an actor and director, Redford continued to create characters who uncovered our our hidden rot, whether or not in our purported nationwide pastime, baseball (“The Natural”), or in our precise one, watching tv (“Quiz Show”). His flip in “Indecent Proposal” as the rich man who provides to lease his worker’s spouse lives on as shorthand for tycoons who assume they will purchase no matter, and whoever, they need. When he finally signed on for a superhero movie, it was, fittingly, alongside Captain America, that upright paragon of advantage — and Redford performed the villain.
What Quayle missed about “The Candidate” is that on the subject of a Robert Redford film, fact isn’t as plain as what your eyes can see. There’s at all times a deeper stage and there’s no assure that justice would win. The truth is, I’d argue in Redford’s movies, it not often does.
