Did you are feeling a pang? Not that I ever discovered him attention-grabbing. However there he was, on the obit display screen, useless at 89, at some second between Barefoot within the Park and Bob Woodward on the Put up. I sighed, “Hello, attractive,” not only for him however for the entire tradition during which some individuals appeared not merely good, however type of noble or virtuous. They appeared like sincere intact icons. And that white lie was going at the same time as Robert Redford reigned.
He was a contact outdated as he started. What it got here to, I’d guess, was that Redford was simple-mindedly straight, not interested in different prospects. Nobody had been so lovely since Montgomery Clift, however the smothered tremor in Clift got here from his wrestle to return off “manly”. That also makes him anguished and engaging. However “Bob” was safe, politely accepting that many ladies would open the door for him, so blind to how the attractiveness of, say, Cary Grant might hold upon sexual insecurity. Redford was house and a little bit alone from the beginning, and he did all he might to look good, in the best whereas on the left, and flawless – however boring?
Sometimes, a flaw confirmed. He appeared to listen to the whispers in his personal head that he is likely to be bogus, or a pretend. It’s there in his sincere pleasure within the confidence trickery of The Sting. Probably the most private movie he directed, Quiz Present, is tidy, first rate and predictable, however he does give John Turturro his wild head whereas accepting that the grave, creative however restricted Ralph Fiennes by no means knew how to do this type of head.
There may be one movie the place Redford is surprising. In Three Days of the Condor, he goes from being a low-level researcher on the hush-hush Manhattan home to somebody who would possibly even run the present. From being hunted and homeless he turns into an clever operator unashamed at his personal sexual outlawry when he not solely imprisons Faye Dunaway however is near raping her. That’s a scenario filled with standard paranoia that digs into the improper erotic collision of two film stars and the implicit intuition that Bob is so good he’s irresistible, or forgivable. There’s a latency at work, that Robert Redford might need managed to play a nasty man if had been unvain sufficient to take the prospect.
This fringe of unkindness is there for a second in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child when he appears able to make the most of Katharine Ross till the mild let-down that these pretty children are solely pretending. He couldn’t lie for quite a lot of minutes, with out pulling himself collectively. So its in Redford that you just start to suspect essentially the most attention-grabbing film actors in America are these into some type of mendacity more often than not. That’s why Nicholson used to tease Warren Beatty about trying so good-looking.
The very best conclusion is that Redford believed in his close-ups; as long as he didn’t grin an excessive amount of, he might go as sincere and lovely, and by no means going to allow you to or himself down. That’s why he couldn’t match the ambivalence in Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt or Streisand. Not to mention the maestro fakes like Tom Cruise and George Clooney, actors whose identification rests within the imbalance of big appeal and the perfume of unreliability.
Redford’s honour reached out into schemes of environmental restoration, and creative help (the branding of “Sundance”), and even the creak of what was referred to as “presidential timber”, like nice redwoods stirring within the wind. There was a time when some hoped Bob ought to run for workplace, till that odd movie, The Candidate, the place the charade of politics is named out. That was a subversive examine of a marketing campaign magnificence who realises his personal face is likely to be a dried turd.
That’s unkind for a naïve actor. However the glory of Redford on display screen was a swansong in the concept that male magnificence is likely to be trusted, and elected. He marks that transient optimism when John Kennedy was considered within the custom of Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper – beauties we might rely on. And Redford could stand because the final Rushmore head, the blond rock residents might swear by, as an alternative of an actor who would possibly say something. And whose prating mouth resembled a coiled anus. Perhaps it’s simply the dismay that adopted the invention of images, however we are going to by no means fall for “good trying” once more.
[See also: Remembering Terence Stamp]