I first encountered Hollywood's forever 'golden boy’ on 70s TV soap Coronation Street. No, it wasn’t a fleeting cameo but an off the cuff remark by landlady Bet Gilroy: "If you have a hot date with Robert Redford, cancel it." I may have been only seven or eight years old, but for years after I wondered who was this Robert Redford fella?
I was about twelve when I finally found out. But now (spoiler alert!) the Sundance Kid was dead, along with Butch Cassidy. The credits rolled on our TV. Their freeze-frame massacre wasn't even dry on my brain when my mum confidently said the producers of the film had actually killed themselves due to their regret at being unable to make sequels following the film's huge success.
Robert Redford has since never left my horizon, introducing from then a certain medium cool existential handsomeness into my life. And fabulous hair. With the deepest respect and affection, I remain convinced that consistency in his hair has been one of the two backbones to a lasting career. The camera embraced him for decades, through transformation from '60s blonde golden boy to '70s dirty blond, subverting his persona at every turn. Redford countered his looks with his second strength: retention. This is one of the reasons his films are very rewatchable - Redford holds back. This almost seems like a reflection of old Hollywood leading men like Shane's Alan Ladd, using their limitations to their advantage - except with Redford it wasn't a limitation, it was a choice. Like when he chooses to test the electric torture box on himself in 1980's underappreciated prison drama Brubaker, I was a bit confused at his stoicism, that he wasn't screaming on the floor. Watching with me, my firefighter dad reassured me electric shocks really hurt. Your hair can even catch fire. This was never going to happen to Robert Redford.
When your name becomes a byword for handsome, as his did in the seventies and eighties, you'd imagine untold millions are on offer to portray 'conventional' movie star roles - more often then not, Redford took a more interesting route. When he did play by-the-numbers leads, in 1986’s Legal Eagles, for example, that was as a paycheck replacement for gone-to-the-hills Bill Murray. By then Redford was up to his neck in saving cinema - or at least extending its life - by founding the now-legendary Sundance Festival, which ushered in a new golden age of American independent film. I don’t think it can be understated how important Sundance became in keeping cinema in the public eye for decades beyond the peaks of old and new Hollywood. It's impact on Hollywood was like a heart bypass, giving careers to new generations of fresh talent in front and behind the camera. It could be argued Robert Redford has had as much an impact on cinema as any of the great masters, based solely on his success in keeping cinema relevant. Perhaps that even trumps his filmography? Considering he starred in films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, All The President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor, I don’t say that lightly.
If you haven’t already, I would recommend the ultimate Redford ‘loner’ double feature of Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and All Is Lost (2013). Not only for the parallel visions of one man surviving alone at nature's mercy, but there are more than forty years between those films, yet he effortlessly swims and hikes from one to the other - or at least makes it feel effortless. Robert Redford did what cinema does best: he held back time. But that wasn’t enough. So he subverted his god-given handsomeness and reset American cinema, far away from Hollywood. Now that’s a legend.
