The Chase — Rent or buy Apple TV+
Before Arthur Penn smashed down the doors of the classic Hollywood era and ushered in the American New Wave with 1967’s Bonnie & Clyde, the director took a big hit at the criminal on the run genre in this expensively produced adaptation of a novel by Horton Foote.
It was a vehicle for Marlon Brando, who stars as the sheriff of a small town in Texas, when news arrives that local bad boy “Bubba” Reeves (Redford) has escaped from a nearby prison and is headed home to see his wife Anna (Jane Fonda), who’s in a relationship with the son of a local businessman. Critics at the time were lukewarm about Penn’s efforts, but they took notice of Robert Redford, whose career was about to skyrocket, even though he’d play too few bad boys in the years to come.
Three Days of the Condor — Rent or buy Apple TV+
Director Sydney Pollack and Redford first collaborated on Pollack’s 1966 film version of Tennessee Williams’ This Property is Condemned. They would make a further six films together over the course of Pollack’s career before his death in 2008.
This post-Watergate paranoid spy-thriller was released in 1975, a year before Redford’s role as Washington Post reporter Bob Woodford in the Alan J Pakula classic All the President’s Men. Redford stars as quiet, back room CIA codebreaker Joe Turner who walks into his office on a seemingly ordinary day to find that all his colleagues have been murdered.
Panicked, Turner flees and informs his superiors but soon finds himself the unwitting target of a dark conspiracy. Tautly directed by Pollack with strong performances from Redford and Faye Dunaway, it’s a classic of the American New Wave paranoid political thriller genre.
The Candidate — YouTube
A dark comic satire of the depressing absurdity of US politics in the pre-Watergate Nixon era, director Michael Ritchie’s second collaboration with Redford — after the 1969 Redford/Gene Hackman sports drama Downhill Racer.
Redford stars as Bill McKay, a well-intentioned California public interest lawyer convinced by Peter Boyle’s Democratic Party fixer to follow in the footsteps of his former governor father and run for the Senate against the state’s popular three-term Republican. Enticed against his better judgment and believing he has no chance of winning, Bill finds his life upended as his message finds support and the impossible looks increasingly more probable.
Quiz Show — Rent or buy Apple TV+
Redford directed nine feature films, beginning in 1980 with Ordinary People, which won four Oscars, including best picture and best director. This, his epic period drama about the 1950s Twenty-One Quiz Show scandal, is arguably his finest, despite its four Oscar nominations not translating into awards.
Starring Ralph Fiennes as East Coast intelligentsia golden boy Charles Van Doren and John Turturro as the much less liked Jewish Herb Stempel, it’s a vividly realised period drama that pierces some sharp holes in the post-War American dream myths of meritocracy and equality.
All is Lost — Rent or buy Apple TV+
JC Chandor’s 2013 drama was entirely anchored on the ability of its single star — a still handsome but aged Redford who gives arguably his last great performance as “Our Man”, a solo sailor who, finds himself in a taut fight for his life after his boat collides with a shipping container.
In 106 minutes of almost dialogue-free tension, Redford commands attention and holds the screen as the completely engaging centrepiece of a bravado minimalist — pure-cinema classic.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.