In the 1970s, Robert Redford was the greatest of all film stars and more successful than this. In addition to Newman, he became famous in 1969 in “Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid”, funnily with a mustache that he absolutely wanted to wear. Newman was the charismatic joke, Redford of the Laconian Hallodri. The distribution of roles was similar in life: when the two actors in 1973 repeated the triumph with “Der Clou”, again directed by George Roy Hill, Newman drove all sorts of scratches – also as revenge for the fact that Redford had appeared too late on the set at “Butch Cassidy”. Newman remained one of the few friends of Redford – shortly before his death in 2008, they thought about another film, but Newman was already too weak from cancer.
Redford hated parties, avoids Hollywood and retired to his property in Utah, at the foot of Mount Timpanogos, which he bought in 1968. In the area, he acquired more and more buildings over the years, founded the “Sundance Resort” with luxuriously equipped, but after ecological reason that functioning wooden houses with a close ski slope, the “Sundance Institute”, which is devoted to the film youngsters with workshops, and in 1980 the “Sundance Film Festival, which soon drawn attention to independently produced films. Layered with indigenous arts; Little time for all the activities for which he always had to raise money.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born in Santa Monica as the son of Charles Redford and Martha Hunt. The father worked as a milk man for a while, then worked on the oil fields of California, the mother was a housewife. Charles often took the son to Connecticut on the east coast, where the family in New London had their roots. An uncle who was admired by Robert lived in Texas. On the streets of Santa Monica and later by Beverly Hills and Brentwood, the boy was a wild outsider who did not shy away from break -ins and thefts. “My family had a dark, cold side,” he says later. The father didn’t speak much, Robert hardly had anything in common with his brother. Redford was a good baseball player and disinterested student at the Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles; He only made it to the University of Arizona with a sports scholarship. There he was interested in art and painting, but devoted himself to alcohol and women in excess. When he was 20, his mother died. Redford neglected, no longer visited courses and traveled to Europe almost center in 1957, where he visited the museums in France, Germany, Spain and Italy and beat himself up as street painters and casual workers. In Rome he wrote down at an art school and spent a cold winter in an unheated room. Before hunger and cold, he developed a method of sinking that put him in a kind of Zen state, even levitation. But it didn’t help: after a year he returned to the USA and worked on oil fields.
From the outsider to the actor
He had not quite given up his dream of painting or cartoon when he moved to New York in 1958, where he initially wrote to the Pratt Institute for Art and Design, but soon moved to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on the advice of a friend. There he was soon notorious through original appearances and his quick grasp, but also his unreliability. The fellow student Lola von Wagenen fell in love with Redford, the two married in California in autumn 1958. Through appearances in small off-broadway theater productions, Redford came to television, where he was allowed to play next to the great Charles Laughton. At that time, the blonde, blue -eyed type George Peppard was sought – when the actor canceled, Redford got a chance.
It was not until 1962 that he was hired for a movie: “War Hunt” was a drama about the Korean War that was quickly forgotten, as was a Läppian comedy by Gottfried Reinhardt with Alec Guinness in 1965. In “Inside Daisy Clover” (1965), a theatrical vehicle for Natalie Wood, Redford played a secondary role; Alan J. Pakula was a producer here. In Arthur Penn’s “The Chase” Redford played the hunted; Marlon Brando gave Feist and Schlunzig the sheriff, who cannot prevent the murder, Jane Fonda played Redford’s lover. Only at the end of the film Redford comes into play as a fled convict and has to hide between bodies on a scrap site, persecuted by the mob and protected by Brando and Fonda. Arthur Penn was taken from the studio of the average, which he complained about decades later – after that he turned “Bonnie & Clyde”.
In 1967 Redford worked for the first time with the director Sydney Pollack, whom he had already met as an actor. “This Property is Conemned” is a bad Tennessee-Williams adaptation, again with Natalie Wood and with an aasy role for Redford. Williams even pulled his name back. “Barefoot in the park”, the film adaptation of the Neil-Simon piece, finally brought Redford on the side of Jane Fondas. The Aktrice raved about how Redford played every scene of his boring role differently – but the film belongs to Fonda and the quirky Charles Boyer. At “Butch Cassidy” Redford was originally supposed to give the title hero and Newman the Sundance Kid – luckily it was then exchanged, because Redford is not funny. George Roy Hills Light Western Farce After a script by William Goldman, a sensational success was.
Ascent to the superstar
In the same year Redford became a producer and shot the story of an ambitious American skier with the writer James Salter and the young director Michael Ritchie. The film was improvised with little money in the Swiss Alps and enriched with material from the Olympic Winter Games in Grenoble, Redford had to learn skiing first. The film has become a kind of faux documentary without a plot; Gene Hackman, who played the trainer, probably didn’t even know what that was all about. Not the audience either. In Ritchie’s “The Candidate” (1972), Redford convinced as a politician who ultimately believes his own talk. “Jeremiah Johnson”, the film about a lonely trapper in the snowy mountains, shows Redford as a fully bearded hermit – some consider this excursion in existentialism to the best work of Redford and Pollack. He persuaded the friend to “as we were” in 1973, a fabric that was initially intended as a musical for Barbra Streisand, but was created by Pollack as a romantic comedy. Streisand wanted to show the camera-as always-only her chocolate side, fell in love with her dazzling-looking partner and was looking forward to the kiss scenes-Redford dealt with it very discreetly and patiently. His next film, “Der Clou”, brought Redford a nomination for the Oscar as the best supporting actor – however, Newman was much more striking in the better role.
Of course, Redford had to play “The Great Gatby”, but the strangely sultry film based on a script by Francis Ford Coppola turned out to be a least disappointment, possibly also because Redford’s statuaric game looked as enigmatic as Gatsby in general. The melancholic flying film “The Great Waldo Pepper” (1975) was a favorite project by George Roy Hill, and Redford was very well as a flunker artflow pilot. “The three days of the Condor” is a perfect paranoia thriller from Sydney Pollack. “All the President’s Men” (1976), the film about the Watergate affair, became a triumph for the producer Redford (who played Bob Woodward), Dustin Hoffman and director Alan J. Pakula. For a lavish fee that he invested in the Sundance Resort, the star then appeared in Richard Attenborough’s war epic “The Bridge of Arnheim” for a few minutes-of course as an upright American who hurries heroes.
Redford retired from the 1970s and the hype for his appearances. “The Electric Rider” brought Jane Fonda and Redford together again in 1979, and Sydney Pollack interpreted the strainless film about a sad advertisement and his horse to the romance of the two main actors – again a key hit. Redford was seen as a “Brubaker” in 1980 and reformed a prison in order to be sold as a director. He prepared his first film very carefully and confidently, “Ordinary People”: Redford hired the popular Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland and the sensational young Timothy Hutton and designed a dark, winter world of suburbs and soul. In 1981, “Ordinary People” was awarded the Oscar as the best film, Redford as the best director.
Director, producer, legend
It wasn’t better, but it was still very good. Barry Levinson turned “The Natural” in 1984: As a mysterious baseball player of the old days, Redford was really occupied, but still a little too-old. What Levinson understood as a burlesque looked like a nostalgic, elegiac melodrama about love and missed opportunities. In 1985 Redford played in Pollack’s most famous film, “Beyond Africa”, mostly had to stand around and ridden away as a big game hunter Finch Hatton and was completely outlined by Klaus Maria Brandauer. “You don’t kiss prosecutors” (1986) is a sad comedy with Daryl Hannah, after whom Debra Winger never wanted to appear in a comedy. Redford’s wonderful, always underestimated Mexico film “Milagro-The War in the Bohnenfeld” shows the director’s love for nature, the bizarre Spökenkiekerei and the cranky rural population. “Havana” (1990) remained the last work with Pollack, in which the two got into a fight. The Swedish Bergman actress Lena Olin is the only gratifying in the Revolution plot, in which Redford, as Alerter poker player Jack Weil, loses the love of his life in Cuba-“Casablanca” without Nazis.
With “From the center there is a river” (1992), “Quiz Show” (1995), “Der Pferdeflüsterer” (1998) and “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (2000) staged Robert Redford detailed, past films. In “Spy Game” (2000), “The Last Fortress” (2001) and “The Clearing” (2004), Redford took over credible retirement roles; He was best in Lasse Hallström’s “an untamed life” (2005): In addition to Morgan Freeman, he played a grumpy farmer who, of all things, has to deal with Jennifer Lopez as a daughter -in -law. For Redford’s role that had been written for Paul Newman, the Hollywood establishment-which Redford had presented an honor Oscar in 2002-could have given an Academy Award.
In 2009, faders were amazed in front of the Hamburg Hotel Louis C. Jacob: Robert Redford, divorced by Lola since 1985, married (in the white suit) the painter Sybille Szagars, with whom he has lived since 1996. For the sake of her relatives, she had organized the festival in her old home, later the lovers smashed a tree trunk.
In the end he accepted that the audience sees him as a romantic hero. In the “horse whisperer” he blows exquisite loneliness when he says to Kristin Scott Thomas: “I didn’t love her because we fit together so well. I just loved them.” And he narrowed his eyes and blinks into the late sunlight over Montana.
Now Robert Redford, the man who seemed to fall slightly, has died shortly after his 89th birthday.