MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Robert Redford said, “The glory of art is that it can not only survive change, it can lead it.”
Redford died on Wednesday at the age of 89. He was an actor, a director, a producer and the founder of the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival, as well as an advocate for nature, artistic expression and free speech, which has never been more important than it is now.
Word of his death has caused most of us great pause. Robert Redford being 89 years of age actually threw me more than the news of his death did. Yet word of his death saddens us, not because we were friends; we never even knew him.
Yet somehow, maybe we did. As he said in his role as Johnny Hooker in The Sting, “You know me. I’m just like you. It’s two in the morning and I don’t know nobody.”
Everyone who loves movies has their own favorite Robert Redford films. Mine are All the President’s Men, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Three Days of the Condor, which I just finally watched, The Natural, The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, Jeremiah Johnson, The Candidate, Barefoot in the Park, The Spy Game, and every single one of us could go on and on.
Early on, when Redford was strictly on screen, it seemed it couldn’t be a Robert Redford film if there wasn’t at least one scene of him sprinting extended distances, something that much later seemed to be a staple in the films of a young Tom Cruise. And it wasn’t a Robert Redford film at all without at least one trademark Redford double-take.
Redford starred in so many exceptional political thrillers, including those that really happened. He was current and ahead of the times at the same time. We can only wonder what he’d have for us now.
He bought the film rights to “All the President’s Men” and played Bob Woodward, reporter for the Washington Post, who, along with Carl Bernstein, played by Dustin Hoffman, broke the Watergate story, motivating countless young people in the mid-’70s to turn to newspapering as their careers.
Every scene between Redford, Hoffman and Jason Robards, who played Post editor Ben Bradlee, is a piece of cinema history. Three screen legends playing three real, enormously consequential individuals at a turning point in American history.
And this is why cinema matters. It’s art.
Redford’s art stands the test of time. His devotion to young filmmakers and artists created the Sundance Film Festival. He stressed the importance of nature. As a director he created art from behind the camera.
There is no such thing as perfect anything, but as far as movies are concerned The Sting has to be the closest thing to it, beginning with the stars, Redford and Paul Newman.
Perhaps they weren’t lifetime performances by either actor, but they were perfect for the parts and their chemistry, which they had established in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, produced near-perfect performances, with Redford’s Hooker telling Newman’s Henry Gondorff during their first meeting, “Luther said I could learn something from you. I already know how to drink.”
The movie is a gem because Redford and Newman are in it, and because the supporting cast, the script, the score and the production keep viewers moving, alert and amused every step of the way no matter how many times they’ve seen it.
In 1984, Redford made The Natural, an adaptation of the Bernard Malamud novel that got the 1980s baseball movies (good baseball movies) boom going.
It doesn’t stay accurate to the book, but in a movie like this one, in which Redford is the star and has a gorgeous left-handed swing, that’s more than okay, with Redford, as Roy Hobbs, delivering one of my two favorite movie lines: ‘God, I love baseball.”
Behind the camera, Redford hit a home run on the first pitch, winning the Oscar for best director of Ordinary People, his first movie as a director. No one had ever seen this Mary Tyler Moore before. No one had seen this Donald Sutherland before (which was saying something), and no one had even seen young Timothy Hutton before, until he won the Oscar for best supporting actor in the film.
Director Redford also earned acclaim for The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It, and Quiz Show.
Redford was an actor who convinced you in roles ranging from high society (The Great Gatsby, The Candidate, Indecent Proposal) to grifters or regular folk just trying to find a way to get by (The Sting, Condor).
What made him the best Gatsby is you didn’t recognize Robert Redford as he was giving you Jay Gatsby.
Much more than a pretty face, he was snubbed by the Academy Awards too many times for having one. Redford’s acting was greatly overlooked and under-appreciated.
His kind of movie is fast disappearing. He made movies that confronted the complexity of the human experience and at the same time were genuinely entertaining. He could think and feel simultaneously, and, in turn, helped us to do the same.
Gratefully, we can enjoy and grow from Robert Redford’s art forever.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT