Robert Redford

Quiz Show (1994)

Quiz Show (1994)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second Viewing, Youtube Streaming, September 2020) I first saw Quiz Show in the mid-1990s and had kept the memory of a dense, smart, compulsively watchable drama about the early days of television quiz shows. Fortunately, a second viewing sustains those high expectations. A historical fictionalization of the quiz show-fixing scandals that roiled TV networks in the 1950s, it’s a throwback to another era but with the same human flaws. Ralph Fiennes plays a telegenic academic from a respected family who comes to accept being fed the answers by the quiz show producers, while John Turturro is the less appealing participant whose volatile personality ends up being a key element in uncovering the scandal. Directed by Robert Redford, Quiz Show is a handsome, polished mid-budget production that seldom talks down to its audience—perhaps the kind of film that is endangered today. It still has a lot to say, as it grapples with the perennial sin of fraud for entertainment, and the irresistible impulse to arrange, guide and control even that’s supposed to be spontaneous. By virtue of being a sober period drama, Quiz Show hasn’t aged much in cinematographic terms, and certainly remains of interest at an age of artifice, high and low.

The Clearing (2004)

The Clearing (2004)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) In between the dark scary forest of genre crime thrillers and the featureless plains of straightforward drama, there is a zone that is neither—a place where crime stories can be used to illustrate human concerns without necessarily becoming genre stories nor completely fall in the vast expanses of straight drama. The Clearing is in such a zone, as the kidnapping of a rich person becomes more of a dramatic vehicle for a good cast than a conventionally satisfying story. In this case, the cast is a trio of legends: Robert Redford plays the kidnapped, Willem Defoe the kidnapper and Helen Mirren the wife who must deliver the ransom. But writer-director-producer Pieter Jan Brugge (directing his first film after a long producing career) isn’t really aiming for a visceral thrill-a-minute kind of film. Instead, he spends his time ambling along with the characters, and even misdirects the audience’s attention to stretch the story for even longer than it is. The result of such shenanigans is not what he had hoped for: The Clearing, in the end, feels like a trick more than a movie. The misdirection hides an unsatisfying ending, and distances audiences from the characters. Neither ends up being a winning move considering the coldness of the film. Despite good work from the actors, The Clearing is not only a disappointment, but something that’s likely to fade away from memory far quicker than a conventionally entertaining genre piece would have.

This Property Is Condemned (1966)

This Property Is Condemned (1966)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) At first glance, there isn’t much in This Property is Condemned to make for compelling viewing. It takes place in a small town whose main attraction remains the railway, features a young woman taking conscious advantage of her beauty to find a way out of town, and ends on an immense downer of an ending made even worse by how it’s casually revealed in voiceover by a minor character. But here’s the thing: The film features Nathalie Wood at her most beautiful, and a very young Robert Redford in full worldly charmer mode. Plus, it’s the second feature film directed by Sydney Pollack, right before becoming a defining filmmaker of the 1970s and 1980s. It’s an impressive pedigree, but it understates the well-oiled nature of the script, which manages to create a captivating atmosphere and compelling characters. This Property Is Condemned is still a sad love story, but there’s plenty to watch along the way as Wood and Redford push and pull, with her character’s mom meddling as much as she can and true love being no match for desperate circumstances. Despite a similar thematic concern of a young woman using her charms to get ahead, there’s a world of difference between this and Breakfast and Tiffany’s, for instance, and you can just feel the disillusionment of New Hollywood peeking through This Property is Condemned, barely a year before Hollywood shifted forever. I may not like the entire film, but there are some really interesting moments along the way to its sombre conclusion.

Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) My interest ebbed and flowed as I sat watching Inside Daisy Clover, a film that seems stuck between the shiny fairytale of 1950s Hollywood and the grim revisionist 1970s. I picked it based on the cast and premise: a drama featuring a young 1930s Hollywood starlet having trouble fitting in, featuring no less than Natalie Woods, Robert Redford and a young(er) Christopher Plummer in a deliciously evil role. Inside Daisy Clover certainly looks good on paper. But it doesn’t start out all that well, what with Woods beginning a film-long struggle with an unflattering hairstyle and the film touching upon an unpleasant blend of teenage alienation and a hard-luck struggle between daughter and mother. The premise starts from pure bubble-gum “poor girl becomes a movie star” to turn into an examination of the hidden darkness behind celebrity, but it somehow doesn’t quite manage to satisfy along the way. Some scenes are quite strong (such as a meta-musical moment in which the increasingly sad song is shot from behind the scenes of a movie shoot), and the ending becomes a bit of explosive dark comedy, but the way from this to that is both too grim and not grim enough to fully satisfy. (Or, if you’d prefer, camp and yet not camp enough.) At some point, I really started wondering how much of Inside Daisy Clover was explicitly meant to evoke Judy Garland (who was still alive at the time). Unusually enough for the mid-1960s, Robert Redford plays a bisexual character—but the film doesn’t get to explore his character as more than an additional burden on the heroine. Hence my opening assertion: the same movie made in the 1950s would have been more buoyant; the same movie in the 1970s would not have pulled its punches. In the meantime, what’s left in Inside Daisy Clover is of mild interest to fans of Hollywood movies about Hollywood, but simply falls apart as its own story.

Brubaker (1980)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2020) Making a movie about prison reform, inspired by real-life events, isn’t exactly the most compelling subject matter. But make sure that your hero is a two-fisted reform advocate, pit him against an entire corrupt prison/town/state and given the role to Robert Redford and suddenly Brubaker gets far more interesting. Redford’s legendary charisma is well suited to his role, as he takes on an establishment that actively profits from old-fashioned prison practices. A gallery’s worth of character actors (including Yaphet Kotto, M. Emmet Walsh, Wilford Brimley and very young Morgan Freeman—recognizable by voice rather than by sight) are united against him. This being from a true story, don’t expect a triumphant ending: at most, the character gets applause and an end title card explaining the scandal that erupted afterward. Still, much of Brubaker’s entertainment value comes in seeing an incorruptible character uncover the vast web of old-boys corruption that surrounds the prison, and defending himself against attacks. It does make for dramatic intensity and narrative interest. It also represents a good entry in Redford’s filmography as a progressive champion, a role matching his political interest with his megawatt charm. Plus, he gets to shoot a shotgun, which isn’t to be neglected.

Indecent Proposal (1993)

Indecent Proposal (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) I thought I would enjoy Indecent Proposal. The subject matter is off-putting by design, but who could imagine that a film with Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Robert Redford could go wrong? To its credit, the film tells you almost from its first thirty seconds that it’s not going to be fun, as a couple reflects on what they had together. One flashback later and we’re quickly off to the celebrated premise of the film as our young couple struggles with money problems and Redford steps in as a billionaire playboy so smitten with her that he offers them a million dollars for a night with her. (In the mid-nineties, this became a popular party question.)  But for such a saucy premise, Indecent Proposal soon sinks in preposterousness and boredom. Directed without much energy nor precision by Adrian Lyne (from a script that reportedly toned down much of the novel’s ambiguity), it’s a film that quickly becomes a feat of endurance as we move from one obvious set-piece to another, the resolution never in doubt even despite the misleading prologue. The longer it goes on after delivering on its premise, Indecent Proposal multiplies the double standards, attempts to make heroes out of obnoxious characters and showcases retrograde ideas about, well, just about everything linked to sex and women. Harrelson is miscast as an intellectual, Moore’s beauty isn’t equalled by an equivalent acting talent, and Redford himself can’t use his charisma to hide the smarminess of his character. It’s all a bit sad, and most fatally, interminable. It took me only a few minutes to lower my expectations, and they stayed there for the rest of the film.

Ordinary People (1980)

Ordinary People (1980)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Kanopy Streaming, September 2019) I approached Ordinary People reluctantly for several reasons: Historically, I suppose I still have a grudge about it winning the Best Picture Oscar over Raging Bull. But then there’s the subject matter, taking a long look at a typical American family coming unglued after the death of the eldest son—grieving over a child’s death is high on my list of unbearable topics at the moment, and that’s only adding to the dreadful prospect of a two-hour-plus mimetic drama (adapted from a mainstream novel) that succeeded in its Oscar-baiting ambitions. But even with this baggage, I have to admit that Ordinary People worked better than I expected—I still don’t love it, but I did develop a grudging respect for it throughout its lengthy duration. It does a few things far better than expected: for one thing, it picks up months after the funeral of the family’s eldest son, sparing us many of the expected clichés about the immediate days after the death. For another, Ordinary People features one of the best and most likable cinematic portraits I can recall of the therapy process, featuring a clever but empathetic psychotherapist (Judd Hirsch, in a career-best role) helping the teenage protagonist work his way through the grieving process. Timothy Hutton is the star of the film, but Donald Sutherland is a good supporting player as a father who gets to grow out of his wife’s influence, while Mary Tyler Moore is cast against type as a sociopathic wife who acts as the film’s villain. It’s interesting mixture of elements, and one that still feels unusually against the grain of such family dramas even forty years later. Robert Redford’s direction isn’t flashy (visually, the film is … fine), but it gets the message across with a great deal of restraint and subtlety. I still think that the film is too long, occasionally very predictable (yes, like we couldn’t see that suicide coming…), unevenly interesting and perhaps lacking a further handful of hard-hitting scenes, but I still found it quite a bit better than expected. Ordinary People does remain in the lower tier of Oscar-Winning Pictures, though—there’s a limit to how pleasantly surprised I can be in this case.

The Old Man & The Gun (2018)

The Old Man & The Gun (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2019) If you’re a legendary actor looking to go out on top, you best bet is to call it quits after a reasonably good film that plays to your persona’s strengths. So, while we may or may not believe 81-year-old Robert Redford when he says he’s retiring as an actor as of The Old Man & The Gun’s release (cameos happen so suddenly, and these days not even death can permanently retire an actor), it does seem like an appropriate swan song for him. Redford has always possessed off-the-chart likability, so it’s appropriate for him to carry a film on his shoulders as an affable elderly bank robber who manages to rob a succession of banks with nothing more than a pleasant disposition and the quick flash of a gun in his hands. The film around him is not quite the same old chase thriller—our dogged policeman on the case ends up having little to do with our anti-hero’s capture, doesn’t have marital problems brought on by the case and only interacts with his prey two or three times. Much of the film spends its time trying to imagine the mindset of an old man only happy when committing (non-violent) crimes. Director David Lowery is quietly building a reputation as a canny explorer of unusual premises, and the result here is both elegiac (for Redford) and comfortable (for the viewer). Touches of humour, irony and flashbacks keep things interesting even when the plot won’t surprise anyone. For Redford, The Old Man & The Gun means going out on a relatively high note, and a powerful reminder of how good he could be just banking on his personal charm.

Legal Eagles (1986)

Legal Eagles (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I don’t think anyone would remember Legal Eagles today if it wasn’t for Daryl Hannah and Robert Redford, but that’s kind of the point of casting stars. The premise of the film has Redford and Debra Winger as competing lawyers who somehow agree to investigate the case they have in common—a sombre painting robbery that turns out to have links with the death of an artist killed eighteen years earlier. As our romantic pair bickers themselves into a healthy romantic tension, we’re free to enjoy the sight of middle-aged Redford at his most charming self, extremely cool even when slightly bumbling. Meanwhile Hannah plays the seductress with dull practice, leaving Winger as the film’s MVP as a combative attorney. Consciously written to feel like a 1940s belligerent romantic comedy, Legal Eagles is definitely middle-of-the-road stuff: there’s a substantial plot, but it’s a star vehicle almost designed to leave viewers with a pleasant feeling that soon evaporates—I’m not sure anyone can recall the details of the narrative even a week later. Still, fifty-year-old Redford is a joy to watch, and the film moves through the motions of its plot so confidently that it does give the impression of going somewhere even despite the banter. I quite liked it, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll remember why in a few months.

The Natural (1984)

The Natural (1984)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Much as baseball is the great American pastime, I’m starting to suspect that baseball movies are the great American cinematic comfort food. Americans understand the rules, they know the game inside-out, they are comfortable with the pacing and they will find the tiniest of evidence to prove that baseball is life and life is baseball. Or something like that. Watching The Natural isn’t quite as mystical as other baseball movies (Looking at you, Field of Dreams), but it’s still not quite realistic, not quite ordinary, not quite believable either. (A prologue with a bat being carved out of wood felled by a lightning strike at least establishes the tone early.)  What The Natural does have going for it is Robert Redford being effortlessly charming, and a roster of supporting actors that include Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey and Wilford Brimley. The big hook of the film has to do with our protagonist being felled by a bullet from a psychotic fan before becoming a star, and then coming back to the game a decade and a half later as a natural talent. There’s a mystery to it that proves less impressive than imagined, but the rest of director Barry Levinson’s film does run on rails all the way to a crucial win. What keeps the film interesting are those incidents approaching the supernatural that are littered around the main plot. By the time our protagonist hits a climactic pitch right into the stadium lights and creates fireworks, you’re either so solidly in the film’s distinctive logic that you’ll cheer, or roll your eyes one last time and say “That’s it, I’m done.”

The Great Gatsby (1974)

The Great Gatsby (1974)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, April 2019) As someone who’s lukewarm about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby but enthusiastic about the first half of the 2013 Baz Luhrmann adaptation, I was curious to see what the sometimes-derided 1974 film adaptation had to offer. Clearly, it couldn’t touch the CGI-fuelled exuberance of the Luhrmann version, but did it have its own strengths? As it turns out, director Jack Clayton’s earlier The Great Gatsby is far more mannered, significantly more realistic, but not distinctively dissimilar from other versions of the story: Love and lust on Long Island, and the unbolting of a man’s statue. I may dislike flapper fashions, but the party scenes are fun and the story moves through the expected beats. The film isn’t without its own stylish elements: There’s at least one good scene transition reusing symbolic imagery. Despite a remarkable cast (Robert Redford! Mia Farrow!)  The actors aren’t particularly remarkable, but the atmosphere is. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same thing, done mid-1970s style. There is some humour: I had to laugh at the line “I’ll travel somewhere, to Montréal maybe.”  The ending does feel drawn-out, however, going on much longer after the final shocking events of the climax. Still, as an adaptation, I can see how The Great Gatsby managed to portray some tricky material, and how it clearly could be improved upon.

The Way We Were (1973)

The Way We Were (1973)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) The New Hollywood of the early 1970s was so depressing that even its romances were doomed to death or divorce. A prominent case in point: The Way We Were, a multi-decade chronicle of the love story between two characters (played by Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford) throughout their hook-ups, breakups, and intervening ups and down. While there’s nothing conceptually wrong with that premise, the execution is severely underwhelming. Under director Sidney Lumet, the film feels like a mosaic of scenes set years apart, not really building on anything nor proposing a coherent dramatic arc other than “they won’t end up together.” There are some vexing narrative decisions that undermine anyone’s attempt to suspend disbelief or in sympathizing with the characters. For instance, much is made of the female lead’s political activism… but the plot doesn’t present an interesting antithesis despite a rich historical potential. Streisand and Redford do look good, but their characterization isn’t particularly deep other than becoming incarnated arguments. Where the film does a bit better by virtue of being a big-budget production is in looking back at a few decades of American history, showing in retrospect what could not be shown on-screen during the Production Code years—including the impact of the blacklist on Hollywood. It’s not particularly dismissive of The Way We Were, but that’s more out of resignation for the nature of the films at the time. I’m not volunteering to see it again any time soon, though.

The Candidate (1972)

The Candidate (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, December 2018) Over a sufficiently long timeline, one of the problems with the world is its tendency to evolve toward a parody of itself, becoming the thing that earlier generations tried to satirize. So it is that I finished watching The Candidate having found it a reasonably tame description of an American political campaign, only to read up on the film and find out that it had been conceived as a satirical comedy. Of course, satire is dead under the current American presidency, and so The Candidate does appear a bit staid today, dealing with a far gentler and more rational era in US politics. This, mind you, is not necessarily a problem—I’m a political junkie and I’m more receptive than most to a movie taking us through an entire senatorial campaign without resorting to huge melodramatic twists à la Primary Colors or The Ides of March. (Which is for the better, given that most post-Clinton US political thrillers seemed to have the same resolution in mind.) Robert Redford is quite good in the film, playing an idealistic candidate who progressively waters down his message in an effort to be elected. The film seems to regard this as a soul-destroying process, but I may be showing my progressivist centric technocrat inner nature when I say that this feels perfectly reasonable and perhaps even admirable. The film isn’t without its funny moments, although some minor plot threads (such as the candidate’s affair with a staffer) get lost in the mix, and I don’t quite think that the protagonist gets a good chance to show his late-campaign desire to win taking over his idealistic convictions. It’s also dated in terms of references and technology but come on: It’s a forty-six-year-old movie. As such, The Candidate has aged nicely enough. I’ll add it to my growing list of essential movies about American politics.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2018) The 1970s were an interesting time for the western genre. Its heydays were clearly over, and the New Hollywood atmosphere was pushing filmmakers toward a revisionist approach to the genre, especially when it came to its portrayal of Native Americans, or newfound environmental attitudes toward the wilderness. All of this can be found in Jeremiah Johnson, arguably less of a western and more of a survival film in which a white protagonist learns to live in nature and fight enemies both natural and human. (It does feel a lot like The Revenant at times.) Native Americans here are portrayed anywhere from helpful to bloodthirsty, but with understandable motives. The on-location footage (nearly the entire film was shot outside studios) is fantastic and does drive home the loneliness of the protagonist against the elements—not to mention the famously slow pacing of the film. Robert Redford stars in nearly every scene as the title character, but frankly the natural landscapes steal the show. The result may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly striking in its own way. Hilariously enough, Jeremiah Johnson remains more noteworthy today as the source of an animated GIF showing Redford (somehow mistakable as Zach Galifianakis) nodding in approval in the wilderness. I’m OK with that if it leads even one person to have a look at the original film.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2018) Watching A Bridge Too Far, I was struck at how closely the film initially seemed to follow the template of The Longest Day: A lengthy WW2 drama covering both sides of the war, with a lavish re-creation of the fighting and an ensemble cast of superstars including Sean Connery, adapted from a non-fiction book by Cornelius Ryan. But the comparisons only go so far, especially as the movie advances and the military operation goes sour. It’s certainly worth noting that a significant cultural shift happened in-between 1964’s The Longest Day and 1977’s A Bridge Too Far: The Vietnam War did much to affect the public perception of war and audiences having digested MASH and Catch-22 and Kelly’s Heroes in 1970 alone were far more willing to embrace a film about an unsuccessful operation. (Even A Bridge Too Far’s opening narration is a bit off-kilter, suggesting a level of built-in cynicism that would have been unheard of fifteen years earlier.) While there are plenty of enjoyable wartime heroics in A Bridge Too Far, mistakes in planning, insufficient intelligence, bad communications and plain old happenstance all contribute to a costly failure. Still, if the events described by the film may be frustrating to watch, the film itself is entertaining enough. The historical re-creation of the massive airdrops is impressive, the massive explosions are numerous and the sheer number of recognizable actors is also notable. Connery gets a great character to play, but there are equally interesting moments for Michael Caine, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman and even Anthony Hopkins in a very early role. The film does not describe a particularly glorious moment for the allied forces, but that may add to the sense of discovery while watching it—I’m a modest WW2 buff thanks to having read many histories of the era as a teenager, but I had either not learned or forgotten much of Operation Garden Market until A Bridge Too Far refreshed my mind. It’s quite a spectacle, and it’s not quite as well-known as other WW2 movies. In any case, it’s worth a watch if the subject matter interests you.