There are movie stars, and then there are mega-stars. For our generation, Robert Redford was one of these. Such iconic movies on his resumé as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, and the sentimental favourite The Way We Were (one of his several films for director Sydney Pollack) will keep him enshrined. For most people, those titles would be career toppers. But he kept growing. He was also a film director, an environmentalist (when such a role was not favourable, especially among superstars) and gave young independent filmmaking talent a spotlight with the founding of Sundance.
I’ve always admired him as an actor, because he wasn’t afraid to challenge himself in roles that sometimes went against his matinee idol good looks, million dollar smile and natural charisma. He could be a cad, like the title role in Michael Ritchie’s excellent Downhill Racer. He even had a flair for comedy as in Barefoot in the Park (one of several films with co-star Jane Fonda), even veering on buffoonery in Ivan Reitman’s underrated Legal Eagles. In his 70s, he turned in one his greatest performances in J.C. Chandor’s nail-biter, All is Lost: all the more, because he utters no dialogue on camera. At age 82, he chose the charming low-key film, The Old Man & the Gun, for his last starring role, one would like to think, precisely because it wasn’t a big Hollywood production. Rather, it seemed just like the “smaller” films that Sundance would champion.
He won an Oscar as Best Director for his first feature from behind the camera, Ordinary People, which also won Best Picture of that year. Today, people more remember this movie for stealing the Oscars from Raging Bull and Martin Scorsese, but it is much more than movie-of-the-week material. It is a very raw, honest portrayal of a family crumbling. It was one of the two titles I researched while preparing my first film, The Broken Circle, which also dealt with loss and a family in crisis. (The other film I referenced was Marisa Silver’s Permanent Record.) But this was no flash in the pan. He would direct other very fine pictures like Quiz Show and A River Runs Through It.
The Redford film I return to again and again is All the President’s Men. It is one of those titles that, for instance, if I happen to catch a few minutes it playing on TV, I will sit and watch the rest of it. My reason is because I am always hooked by that engrossing story. The film isn’t necessarily a star vehicle for him, as Bob Woodward, or Dustin Hoffman, as Carl Bernstein, as the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal, because the personalities are secondary. Still, this exemplifies for me much of what represents Redford’s honesty and integrity onscreen and off. To Robert Redford, it was less about image than being true to the work.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.