The Couch Potato's Guide to Old Hollywood: The Legacy of Robert Redford « Geoffrey Carter

NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Geoff Carter

During his storied career, Robert Redford was not only known as one of the great leading men of his generation, but also as a gifted director, producer, and outspoken advocate of independent film. Founder of the now internationally renowned Sundance Film Festival, Redford has been a long-time champion of defying the constrictive practices of the Hollywood studio system by encouraging the independent filmmaking industry. He is also a dedicated environmentalist and long-time supporter of Native American Rights.

Redford burst onto the movie scene in 1969 with the hit Western comedy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, sharing top billing with Paul Newman. The two shared a unique on-screen chemistry that was soon parlayed into a second “buddy” film featuring the pair titled The Sting. Between the two films, Redford also starred in Jeremiah Johnson, Tell Them Willie Boy is Here, and Downhill Racer, establishing him as a leading man in his own right. With his chiseled good looks, measured and deliberate delivery, as well as his reserved manner and incisive intelligence, Redford was stereotyped as just another pretty boy movie star, a label that unfortunately stuck with him, obscuring the fact that he is a subtle and nuanced actor.

Redford has made a career out of portraying outsiders and outlaws like the Sundance Kid, Forrest Tucker, or Johnny Hooker, misanthropes like Jeremiah Johnson, and loners like the unnamed sailor in All is Lost, roles that reflect his own fierce independence and determination to forge his own career path. While some of these characters, like Tucker and Hooker, exude a certain amount of charm, they are still driven by a desire—a need—to function outside the boundaries of normal society.

In The Old Man and The Gun, the incorrigible bank robber Forrest Tucker is a friendly and affable older gentleman who politely robs banks and effortlessly breaks out of jail after jail. The portrayal is buoyed by Redford’s ceaseless and seemingly unfounded optimism while portraying Tucker; you can’t help liking the guy, and, like Redford’s other lovable outlaws, you can’t help rooting for him.

In All is Lost, a role Redford creates with very little dialogue and no supporting actors, he portrays a nameless man facing down the forces of nature. He says very little, but as his situation deteriorates and his all his formidable sailing skills cannot help him, we see, through gestures and facial expressions, a man struggling for his life but beginning to understand that he is going to die.

The film is a beautiful parable for aging, for the inevitable sinking of us all, and Redford carries it off with a stoic dignity and strength that the audience has come to expect from him, as an actor, an artist, and as a man.

Robert Redford’s Ten Best Film Roles

The Way We Were: In this romantic feature, Barbra Streisand plays Katie Morosky, a strident Jewish campus activist who falls in love with Hubbell Gardiner, a good-looking Protestant boy who likes to the easy way out. Although their differences are immense, there is a mutual attraction, but the two-part ways after graduation. They meet again during the latter part of World War II and eventually marry. Hubbell is offered a job as a screenwriter and the couple moves to Hollywood, where Katie feels lost. Some of their friends are eventually enmeshed in the UnAmerican Activities Committee. Katie feels compelled to fight while Hubbell wants to lay low. The two eventually realize things will never work out. Notable for Redford’s restrained performance as a man who has everything but doesn’t know what to do with it.

Starring: Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Bradford Dillman, Viveca Lindfors, Murray Hamilton, and Patrick O’Neal. Screenplay by Arthur Laurents. Directed by Sydney Pollack.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: In this neo-Western comedy, Redford’s Sundance Kid plays straight man to Paul Newman’s wise-cracking Butch Cassidy. In turns, delightful, thrilling, funny, and sappy (see the bicycle sequence), this movie is always the first of the great “buddy” films, highlighting a “bromance” between its two outlaw heroes. Newman and Redford do have a nice chemistry together and William Goldman’s script is full of both great situational humor and zippy one-liners. Redford’s portrayal of the outwardly stoic and gruff Sundance Kid balances a tough guy persona with a sense of sometimes whimsical humor, all the funnier because it doesn’t seem as if the kid is trying to be funny. Notable for Burt Bacharach’s outstanding score.

Starring: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Katherine Ross, Strother Martin, Henry Jones, George Furth, Kenneth Mars, and Ted Cassidy. Screenplay by William Goldman. Directed by George Roy Hill.

Brubaker: This prison drama, based on a true story, follows newly appointed warden Henry Brubaker (Redford) as he starts his new appointment at Wakefield State Prison by going in undercover as a prisoner. In the process, he witnesses sexual assaults, rotten food, extortion, and torture. After he reveals himself to be the warden, Brubaker attempts to institute reform, but is fought at every turn by prison board officials and his own staff. Still, he exposes graft in food and materials procurement, a love shack on the grounds, and other criminal acts, finally stumbling onto the unmarked graves of dozens of executed prisoners. Despite attempts by the powers that be to stop him, Brubaker moves ahead, finally exposing the corruption behind Wakefield. Redford portrays Brubaker as an ideologue determined to exterminate the horrors around him. While his earnestness at times threatens to overwhelm the character, Redford manages to maintain the human side of the man. Notable for the graphic and horrific opening sequences.

Starring: Robert Redford, Jane Alexander, Yaphet Kotto, Murray Hamilton, David Keith, and Morgan Freeman. Written by W.D. Richter. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

Jeremiah Johnson: In this classic Western, Redford portrays Jeremiah Johnson, a war veteran who decides to eschew civilization and take up the life of a mountain man. Struggling through his first winter, Johnson runs into “Bear Claw” (Will Geer), a grizzly bear hunter, who takes him under his wing and teaches him how to survive as a trapper in the wild. Johnson then runs Del Gue, a trapper who has been tortured and robbed by Blackfoot warriors. After helping him recover his goods, Johnson is befriended by a Crow chief and ends up marrying his daughter. They have a son, but after his family is killed by Blackfeet warriors. Johnson exacts his revenge on the killers of his family, who swear vengeance on him in turn. Redford’s portrayal of a man who progresses from a young idealist to a grizzled and bitter man bent on revenge is a wonderful piece of acting.

Starring: Robert Redford, Will Geer, Allyn Ann McLerie, Stefan Gierasch, Charles Tyner, and Delle Bolton. Written by Edward Anhalt and John Milius. Directed by Sydney Pollack.

All the President’s Men: This is the dramatization of Washington Post reporters’ Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) famed investigative coverage of the Watergate scandal that shook the very foundations of the government. Woodward, a young reporter, is assigned to cover the burglary at the Watergate Hotel. He soon uncovers links between the burglars and E. Howard Hunt, a White House operative. Editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) assigns Bernstein to work with Woodward, and although they seem like strange bedfellows, they soon develop a good working relationship. Woodward meets with “Deep Throat”, a mysterious government contact that encourages him to follow the money. Eventually, through dogged reporting and courageous investigation, they uncover a trail leading straight to the White House. Redford is at his best as the determined and idealistic reporter who, when he suddenly realizes where the investigation is leading, exhibits the courage to finish what he started.

Starring: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander, Lindsay Crouse, and Martin Balsam. Written by William Goldman. Directed by Alan J. Pakula.

The Sting: In this Depression-era crime thriller, Redford and Newman reprise their “buddy film” success of Butch Cassidy as a couple of grifters seeking revenge against a Chicago crime boss who killed one of their best friends. The duo plan to dupe their mark him with a “wire”, an elaborately contrived off-track betting parlor con game. Redford plays Johnny Hooker, who hooks up with the more experienced Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). Kelly baits the mark, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), by telling him about the scam while Gondorff enlists an elite team of the best scammers around to execute the elaborately contrived plan. Written and directed in the same comedic crime thriller vein as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the film is great fun. Redford’s portrayal of the charming young grifter Johnny Hooker is tempered by his dogged determination to avenge the death of his friend Luther.

Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Ray Walston, Robert Earl Jones, Harold Gould, Eileen Brennan, and Jack Kehoe. Written by David S. Ward. Directed by George Roy Hill.

Three Days of the Condor: In this espionage thriller, Redford plays Joe Turner, a white-collar CIA office worker who stumbles onto an espionage thriller he believes may be linked to an international plot. Turner leaves the office and returns to find his co-workers murdered. He reaches out to his superior but soon discovers that because of the plot he’s uncovered that he is a marked man. To protect himself, Turner forces his way into a stranger’s apartment and holds her hostage until he can figure out what to do. The woman, Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway), after her initial fears subside, begins to trust Turner, who finally figures out a way to save himself while evading the paid assassin Joubert (Max von Sydow) who had been originally assigned to rub him out. As a man who is witnessing the façade of his life and his belief in his country being slowly peeled away, Redford creates an edgy resourceful edge to a once-passive civil servant.

Starring: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow, John Houseman, and Michael Kane. Written by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and David Rayfiel. Directed by Syndey Pollack.

All is Lost: In this survival drama, one lone sailor is pitted against the forces of nature. Redford plays the solitary mariner who wakes in the middle of the Indian Ocean to find water flooding his boat as the result of a collision with a cargo pod. Although the man does everything as he should in order to keep afloat, disaster follows disaster. Storms, equipment failures, and misfortune plague him, yet the sailor still fights to survive. Finally, having navigated by dead reckoning to the shipping lanes, he cannot get the attention of two passing container ships. Desperate, he makes a last-ditch attempt at rescue by lighting a fire on his craft. Containing only fifty-one words of dialogue, the story is told entirely through images. Redford’s portrayal of a man’s struggle to survive with no other actors and very little dialogue is a tour-de-force. His desperate struggle for survival registers only through his eyes and expression.

Starring: Robert Redford. Written and directed by J.C. Chandor

The Old Man and the Gun: In this, one of his last films, Redford plays real-life bank robber and escape artist Forrest Tucker, a seventy-four-year-old career criminal whose gentlemanly ways charm his victims; while fleeing one robbery, he assists Jewel (Sissy Spacek) on the side of the road as police cars roar by—pursuing him. With the help of two cohorts Teddy Green (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits), Tucker goes on a string of successful bank heists, confounding Dallas police detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck) who begins to feel an affinity for the gentleman bandit, who has rarely drawn his gun and never fired it. After finally being apprehended, Tucker is visited by Jewel, who makes him promise not to escape prison for the seventeenth time. As Tucker, Redford is at his most charming and genial while still conveying the independent spirit of a man who refuses to recognize authority. Notable for great supporting performances by Danny Glover and Tom Waits.

Starring: Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tom Waits, Casey Affleck, and Elisabeth Moss. Written and directed by David Lowery.

The Candidate: In a premise that seems naïve by today’s cutthroat political standards, political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) is looking for a Democratic senatorial candidate to oppose Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter). Unable to find any names to run, Lucas recruits Bill McKay (Redfort), an idealist who agrees to run only if he can say whatever he wants on the campaign trail. As the campaign wears on, however, and it appears as if McKay might have a chance of winning, Lucas begins to choreograph and structure McKay’s stance on the issues. Each day, McKay sees his political stance become more and more diluted until finally he blurts out his true feelings after a debate. McKay, with the assistance of his ex-governor father, finally pulls off the impossible. As McKay, a man who stands by watching his ideals slowly slip away for a victorious cause, Redford embodies a man who finds himself enmeshed in the cogs of power.

Starring: Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Melvyn Douglas, Don Porter, Allen Garfield, Morgan Upton, and Michael Lerner. Written by Jeremy Larner. Directed by Michael Ritchie.