REBEL REDFORD

DOWNHILL RACER (1969: Dir.  Michael Ritchie)

Having recently announced his retirement from acting, Robert Redford can look back with pride on a cinematic legacy that combined substantive artistic endeavour with quality entertainment. It was a long road to get there and it began in the late 1960s when the film Barefoot in the Park (1967) had finally secured his popular stardom after a string of noble failures including: Inside Daisy Clover (1965), The Chase (1966), and This Property is Condemned  (1966).  Capitalizing on this box office success, Redford began to develop his own ideas for film roles that would challenge the public's perception of him as a slice of blonde Californian beefcake. The first project that captured his imagination was a film to be directed by Roman Polanski based on Oakley Hall's novel The Downhill Racers. Despite his fanatical interest in the sport of skiing, Polanski left to direct Rosemary's Baby (1968) after he clashed creatively with Redford over the script. Undaunted, Redford personally took over the project as an unofficial producer, approaching numerous prominent film directors to no avail, until he offered the job to television director Michael Ritchie. A 6 foot 7 inch tall intellectual, Ritchie cut an imposing figure whose visual ideas for scenes were hard fought, even when in conflict with Redford, his sponsor and star. Both men envisioned the film to be made in an almost documentary style, a low budget approach that was required by Redford's parsimonious production partnership with Paramount Pictures chairman Charles Bludhorn. It was a daring stylistic experiment. Few Hollywood films at the time had taken a leap into Cinéma vérité but both Ritchie and Redford knew that a story critical of American exceptionalism needed to abandon all pretense of artifice. Reflecting the 1965 formation of a full-time United States ski team, Downhill Racer is a hard-hitting examination of an athlete who sees winning as the only option. In the title role of Dave Chappellet, Redford is a revelation playing an amateur athlete struggling to be noticed by his cold displeasing farmer father. Willfully shunning audience sympathy, Redford carefully reveals him to be both ruthless competitor and vainglorious pretty boy. Ever the canny businessman, Redford hedged his bets with a previous film project Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a huge box office hit which opened only a week before Downhill Racer. As written in William Goldman's sparkling script, Redford's Sundance Kid is a young hot shot starting to believe in his own legend, but unlike the serious and self-absorbed Chappellet, Sundance's breezy sardonic humour helps to undercut any arrogant macho posturing, resulting in a much more sympathetic anti-hero. Shortly after Downhill Racer, Redford would re-visit the world of competitive sport, this time as a womanizing motorcycle racer in Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), one of his few subsequent critical and commercial failures. Redford also successfully re-united with director Ritchie for The Candidate (1974), a trenchant satire of ideological politics in the post Nixon era. As he approached middle age Redford would make his other statement about sport and fame in America, The Natural (1984) directed by Barry Levinson. By this time the Reagan era had largely washed away the cynicism of the Seventies and Redford wholly embraced this new optimism with a mythologizing story about a near superhuman baseball hero. The Natural represented Redford as pure entertainer, a somewhat surprising contrast to Downhill Racer which had been Redford as social gadfly. In his most recent years in front of and behind the camera, he has continued to challenge notions of American political and moral authority with a series of films including: Lions for Lambs (2007), The Conspirator (2010), The Company You Keep (2012), and Truth (2015). If his promise to retire is fulfilled then he has left us a significant body of work. Films that make us ask questions to ourselves and others while at the same time conveying Robert Redford's belief in the power of humanity to learn from its mistakes, slowly making its way toward self-awareness. Blu-ray

MICHAEL CRICHTON'S #MeToo MOVIE

COMA (1978: Dir. Michael Crichton)

While HBO is currently mining the themes of free will and artificial intelligence in its TV series adaptation of Michael Crichton' s 1973 film Westworld (see also my previous blog: http://usherontheaisle.blogspot.com/2008/02/cinemas-soothsayer.html), I recently chose to re-visit Crichton's biggest hit as a film-maker and his only major directorial effort that did he did not originate. Coma, the 1977 best selling thriller by Dr. Robin Cook was purchased for film by producer Martin Ehrlichman because he thought it could do for hospitals, what Jaws  had done for beaches and deep water. To bring the novel to the screen he wisely chose Crichton, a former Harvard medical student who had written his own award-winning medical thrillers (A Case of Need, The Andromeda Strain) and was in the early stages of a parallel career directing for film and television. Crichton was uniquely qualified to both write and direct the project given his own medical experiences at Boston City Hospital, the inspiration for the hospital portrayed in the book. Like Cook, his friend and fellow author, he was also highly critical of the elitist staff and backroom politics he had witnessed there. This point of view is particularly amplified in both the novel and film by it's distinctly feminist heroine. French Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold was a perfect contemporary casting choice to play Dr. Susan Wheeler, a respected second year surgical resident at Boston Memorial Hospital, who uncovers a conspiracy to kill patients undergoing routine surgery. Bujold, despite her petite form, is an actress who exudes a strong independent nature in all of her roles. Here she expertly navigates the emotional minefield of a chauvinist hospital bureaucracy corrupted by greed and patriarchal power. Skeptics might think her character behaves recklessly, but the audience is with her all the way. Like those who saw the film during its original release, I found myself applauding Bujold's determined belief in her own intelligence as well as her admirably fearless physical courage during the film's numerous nail-biting suspense sequences. Solidly in support is a young Michael Douglas as her ambitious boyfriend and fellow doctor. Added marquee value is also provided by the venerable Richard Widmark, paternal and patronizing as the hospital's chief of surgery. Although Michael Crichton left medicine to become a writer, he continued his fascination with doctors, much later being the creator of the highly successful and critically acclaimed television series ER. Expertly photographed by ace cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (The Hospital, Dog Day Afternoon) and subtly scored by film composer Jerry Goldsmith (Chinatown, The Omen), Coma, on its fortieth anniversary, can be seen as Crichton's initial statement on the difficulties that women face in the medical establishment, a problem that still faces a profession largely founded by men of overrated self-importance.  Blu-ray

FRANKENHEIMER FAVOURITES Part One

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964: Dir. John Frankenheimer)

There are few directors in Hollywood today who can compare with the generation that learned their craft in the pressure cooker of live dramatic television. Legendary names such as Arthur Penn, George Roy Hill, Franklin Schaffner, and Sidney Lumet were all veterans of this unique school of directing where mistakes were made in public and spontaneous inspiration could make the difference between mediocrity or artistic success. Although primarily remembered as a breeding ground for great writers like Rod Serling and Paddy Chayevsky, directors who initially worked in this exciting live medium went on to become some of the great filmmakers of their era. John Frankenheimer was only a kid in his early twenties when he went to work as an assistant to Sidney Lumet, consequently graduating on to direct his own acclaimed productions for such award-winning series as Playhouse 90. Early acclaim lead to his feature film directorial debut The Young Stranger (1957), a failure Frankenheimer acknowledged due to his lack of big screen directorial experience. Disillusioned he returned to TV, but within a few years and after careful study of cinematic technique including the use of camera lenses and film editing, he easily made the leap into quality motion pictures. The intensely productive period that followed showcased his newly assured talent for movie storytelling. The Young Savages (1961), All Fall Down (1962), The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and most importantly The Manchurian Candidate (1962), demonstrated Frankenheimer's unique visual point-of-view, employing deep focus foreground close-ups to startling dramatic effect. His next project Seven Days in May was a novel brought to him by Edward Lewis, the producing partner of Kirk Douglas, with Kirk starring as a bellicose General plotting to overthrow the government of a controversial Democratic President. Frankenheimer suggested his old friend Rod Serling to adapt the book, with Douglas' Gunfight at the O.K. Corral co-star Burt Lancaster as the staff officer who uncovers the coup. Sensing an opportunity to play a role at odds with his public persona as a liberal progressive, Lancaster, who had just completed two previous projects with Frankenheimer, insisted on swapping roles with Douglas. Eager to reprise their previously successful partnership, Kirk gave into his friend's demands, but acting as Burt's less charismatic whistle-blowing adversary, was a decision he soon regretted after filming began. An added bonus came with the tacit support of Manchurian Candidate fan President John F. Kennedy, who gave Frankenheimer permission to film a political riot in front of the White House. Literate dialogue combined with a strong directorial eye culminated to produce a vividly topical thriller much in the same style as such other recent Washington exposés as: Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent (1962), Franklin Schaffner's The Best Man (1964) and Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe (1964). Providing stalwart support to the two leads are a peerless troupe of talent who bring verisimilitude to every scene, most memorably Martin Balsam, Edmond O'Brien, and in his acting debut, former producer John Houseman. Frankenheimer's greatest casting coup was that of the magisterial Frederick March as an embattled Commander-in-chief, representing the very embodiment of humanistic morality in the face of Lancaster's swaggering military martinet. Apart from a lethargic performance by an ailing Ava Gardner, Frankenheimer always maintained that Seven Days in May contained the best cast he ever had to work with, the only exception being his epic length 1973 adaptation of The Iceman Cometh, featuring March's valedictory performance.  A curious addendum to the filming came many months later when Frankenheimer was filming The Train in France also with Burt Lancaster. After after an unsuccessful preview screening of Seven Days in May with an ending where Lancaster's villain is killed in a car crash, Frankenheimer chose to re-shoot a new version with Burt's character surviving instead. Given the logistics of the situation, the Washington locations had to be doubled in Paris, a nearly impossible task but accomplished with a seamless result. Now with the film closing on a less sensational note, it went on to become one of his biggest popular successes, auspiciously inaugurating a most productive partnership with Edward Lewis that spawned some of the most undervalued films of John Frankenheimer's career. DVD & Blu-ray

MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part Six

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Robert Mitchum famously turned down the role of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, so it came as a surprise when he ended up in this low-rent ripoff of William Friedkin's classic cop thriller. The Amsterdam Kill is at the fag end of Mitchum's career as a leading man in cinema, with only two major starring roles yet to come: The Big Sleep (1978) and The Ambassador (1984). At 60 years old a now portly Bob is well cast as a washed-up DEA agent hired by an Asian drug lord who wants to retire by turning informant for the Feds. Directed by martial arts auteur Robert Clouse (Enter the Dragon), it was trashy films like this that undermined Mitchum's great legacy as a versatile performer. As with many of the roles during his autumnal period (Matilda, Agency, Breakthrough, Nightkill) Mitchum is obviously just picking up a paycheck, delivering a performance in what came to be derisively described as his sleepwalking style. Not to say that Mitchum isn't entertaining in pulp like this (he almost always is), but clearly Clouse is more confident staging action sequences than he is directing actors, a fact publicly declared by Bob himself when promoting the film. While acknowledging its narrative weaknesses, I have no difficulty defending my fondness for The Amsterdam Kill. After all, Robert Mitchum is front and centre for one of his last big-screen starring roles. I patiently await its much hoped for release on DVD or BLU-RAY, a precious late career opportunity to see the original King of Cool in action.

MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part Five

MISTER MOSES (1965: Dir. Ronald Neame)

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Without a doubt the most scarce film on my Mitchum list, Mister Moses is the joker in the deck and contains one of Bob's best light comic performances as a con man who helps re-locate an entire African village with the help of blonde bombshell Carroll Baker and an endearing elephant for transportation. British director Ronald Neame had originally envisioned a 24 year-old Julie Christie (Billy Liar) as Bob's leading lady but she was not yet deemed a big enough star, although that would soon be remedied with her next film Darling (1965). According to Neame, Mitchum was his usual professional self on set but did not refrain from some significant imbibing during his off hours while on the remote Kenyan locations. He also befriended the tribe of Masai warriors who were featured in the film, and enjoyed participating in many of their tribal rituals, although he didn't take to their diet of cattle blood and milk. The lively music is by John Barry who would come to be the film composer most associated with East Africa for his award-winning scores of Born Free (1966) and Out of Africa (1985). Unfortunately the availability of Mister Moses has been been sporadic at best over the years having never been released on any home video format. Due to its dated colonial attitudes it may never see the light of day and as such it remains my most sought after Mitchum movie.