Another tip of the hat to Robert Redford, who’s been on the planet for 85 years as of today. Never forget that his legend is rooted in a 12-year peak period — a heyday that began with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (’69) and came to an end with Brubaker (’80).
Three of my favorite Redford moments are (a) the silly laughter taping scene from The Candidate (’72), (b) the goodbye-to-Faye Dunaway scene in Three Days of the Condor (’75) and (c) the gentle finale in a 1962 Twilight Zone episode, titled “Nothing in the Dark”.
You can break his career down into three phases — warm-up and ascendancy (’60 to ’67), peak star power (’69 to ’80) and the long, slow decline in quality (’84 to his relatively recent retirement).
Redford’s best peakers, in this order: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (’69), All The President’s Men (’76), Three Days of the Condor (’75), The Candidate (’72), Downhill Racer (’70), The Sting (’73), Jeremiah Johnson (’72), The Hot Rock (’72), The Way We Were (’73), Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (’70), The Electric Horseman (’79) and Brubaker (’80) — a total of 11.
Think of that — over a 12-year period Redford starred in 11 grand-slammers, homers, triples and a couple of ground-rule doubles. That’s pretty amazing.
Mezzo-mezzos & whiffs during peak period: Little Fauss and Big Halsy, The Great Gatsby, The Great Waldo Pepper, A Bridge Too Far (4).
After Brubaker Redford became an older-guy movie star who’d seen better days (i.e., wasn’t landing the greatest parts any more) and was trying to maintain his dignity as best he could.
For 14 years he held his own with better-than-decent performances in The Natural, Out of Africa, Legal Eagles, Havana, Sneakers, Indecent Proposal, Up Close & Personal and The Horse Whisperer — all reasonably good films that didn’t quite have that rocket-fuel, bulls-eye element, at least as far as Redford’s characters or performances were concerned. (Out of Africa belonged to Meryl Streep.)
Things began to get a bit more rickety starting in the mid ’90s — The Last Castle, The Clearing, An Unfinished Life, Lions for Lambs, The Company You Keep.
But then Redford rallied with what I believe is his finest all-time performance in J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, as an older-guy sailor trying to survive rough seas. He was also part of a sturdy, hard-working ensemble when he played Dan Rather in James Vanderbilt‘s Truth (’15).
I’m sorry but I didn’t think that all much of his other recent efforts — Captain America: The Winter Soldier, A Walk in the Woods, Pete’s Dragon, The Discovery and Our Souls at Night (not bad but minor).