With his killer smile, the sex symbol image, Robert Redford would go beyond just being an actor, remembers Aseem Chhabra.
IMAGE: Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.
I discovered Robert Redford in 1974.
Fresh out of high school, I made my first trip outside India.
My father was generous to send me on a vacation to Europe.
I made full use of the time abroad watching several films and discovering some top Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando and Al Pacino (The Godfather, 1972), Jack Nicholson (The Last Detail, 1973), Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were, 1973), and Redford, her co-star in that lovely romantic film.
Redford also appeared in another film that year, The Sting (1973).
IMAGE: Robert Redford with Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.
I could never decide who was a better-looking actor, Redford or the equally charming and talented Paul Newman, who got the top billing in The Sting and was 11 years senior to his co-star.
Later, in India, I would watch their earlier collaboration Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), where they played the likable robbers in a western setting. Remember Newman riding a bicycle with Katharine Ross and with B J Thomas singing Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head?
Newman passed away in 2008.
The news of Redford’s death at the age of 89 closed a remarkable era in the history of Hollywood.
Redford and Newman would only star in two films, both directed by George Roy Hill. But they were such a good pair together. Redford later would say that it was Newman who recommended him for the role in Butch Cassidy and they formed a lifelong friendship.
IMAGE: Robert Redford and Paul Newman in The Sting.
In discovering Redford, a new world had opened up for me.
With his killer smile, the sex symbol image, this man would go beyond just being an actor.
In his 40s, he would take up direction when he made several films including his debut Ordinary People (1981), a heartbreaking story of a family devastated by a death. He won his only Oscar for this film.
He was nominated for a few more Oscars, for the critically acclaimed Quiz Show (1995) which he directed and earlier for Best Actor in The Sting. But he never won another Oscar.
IMAGE: Ralph Fiennes in Robert Redford’s directorial, Quiz Show.
In 1984, Redford took a step that would gain him admiration from film-makers around the world.
He took over a struggling film festival in Utah and named it the Sundance Film Festival, after an institute he had established to support independent film voices and also a nod to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.
Today, Redford’s legacy remains not just in the form of the festival — one of the biggest in the world — but also the environmental causes he supported.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally did the right thing to present him an honorary Oscar in 2002.
In his acceptance speech, he spoke about giving back to the industry that had been good to him.
‘Sundance is a manifestation of that,’ he said.
‘The result is a grand collaboration of artists and colleagues who join to help and support new artists. I believe it is going to be important in the years to come to make sure we embrace the risks… to make sure the freedom of artistic expression is nurtured and kept alive.’
IMAGE: Robert Redford with Dustin Hoffman in All The President’s Men.
I watched at least one more film of his in India in the 1970s, Alan J Pakula’s political thriller All the President’s Men (1976), based on the best-seller by The Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Often referred to the greatest political film made in Hollywood, All the President’s Men tracked the fall of Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis.
In the film, Redford played Woodward, while Dustin Hoffman was Bernstein.
IMAGE: Robert Redford in Three Days Of The Condor.
Many years later while I was living in New York City, I saw Redford in a riveting CIA spy thriller Three Days Of The Condor (1975), directed by Sydney Pollack. Faye Dunaway was Redford’s co-actor.
Redford had a good working relationship with Pollack.
The two collaborated on seven films together, including those that I count as Redford’s great romantic movies, The Way We Were and Out of Africa (1985).
IMAGE: Robert Redford with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.
The Way We Were has one of the most heartbreaking closing scenes when Redford’s Hubbel Gardiner and Streisand’s Katie Morosky, once lovers, but now long separated, meet by chance outside New York City’s Plaza Hotel.
Hubbel comments that Katie has stopped straightening her hair.
She slowly caresses his hair on his forehead and they hug as the music for the film’s theme song plays in the background.
‘See you, Katie,’ Hubbel says as he rushes back to his wife who is sitting in a cab.
‘See you, Hubbel,’ she mutters after he has left.
In her review of The Way We Were in The New Yorker, the late Pauline Kael wrote, ‘Redford has never been so radiantly glamorous as when we saw him through Barbra Streisand’s infatuated eyes.’
This is what Streisand wrote in her tribute to Redford on Instagram: ‘Every day on the set of The Way We Were was exciting, intense and pure joy. We were such opposites: He was from the world of horses; I was allergic to them! Yet, we kept trying to find out more about each other, just like the characters in the movie.’
IMAGE: Robert Redford with Meryl Streep in Out Of Africa.
In Out of Africa, Pollack made Redford’s Denys Finch Hatton wash Meryl Streep’s Karen Blixon’s hair by a river in Kenya.
Last year at the Cannes film festival, Streep described the scene as ‘gorgeous’.
She said Redford was not a pro at shampooing but he figured it out after a few takes.
‘It’s a sex scene in a way because it’s so intimate,’ Streep said before the Cannes audience.
‘We’ve seen so many scenes of people f***ing, but we don’t see that love, touch, that care. Gorgeous. I didn’t want it to end that day.’
IMAGE: Robert Redford with Jane Fonda in Our Souls At Night.
Among his other popular pairing was with Jane Fonda.
‘I was in love with him,’ Fonda once said.
‘I made four films with him, and for three, I was in love with him.’
Their last collaboration Our Souls at Night (2017), based on Kent Haruf’s novel, was directed by Indian American filmmaker Ritesh Batra.
In the film, Redford and Fonda played widowed neighbours.
They are not in love with each other, but to cope with their loneliness the two decide to sleep every night in the same bed.
Redford had one more connection with India, although this was quite random.
His 2007 directorial venture Lions for Lambs with Streep and Tom Cruise opened in several international markets on November 9.
The same day Om Shanti Om and Saawariya also opened in the theatres. It was Diwali.
The Bollywood films performed far better at the box office than Lions for Lambs.
A November 11 report in Variety said: ‘Bollywood stole the spotlight from Tom Cruise’s Lions for Lambs at the international box office over the weekend, with a pair of socko launches for Shah Rukh Khan’s Om Shanti Om and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya.’
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
