An iconic face in such films as “All the President’s Men” and “The Natural,” Redford was a key figure of the New Hollywood — the late-’60s creative upheaval that brought fresh life to the film industry, at a time when television was siphoning audiences away and the studios were flailing to identify what the younger generation wanted. All my life, critics have praised the golden era of ’70s cinema, of which Redford was a fixture, playing a wide range of iconic roles, from the rugged wilderness man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to the Jazz Age millionaire of “The Great Gatsby.” Two short months after the Watergate break-in, he appeared in 1972’s political satire “The Candidate,” and four years later, he embodied dogged Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men,” the definitive account of the moment America lost faith in its leaders. If that project was the culmination of what he’d learned from the great directors he’d worked with, Sundance was an effort to open the field to others, to eliminate the barriers of entry and encourage stories that weren’t being told (as well as environmental-themed movies close to Redford’s heart, such as “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Cove”).
Author: Peter Debruge
Published at: 2025-09-16 22:06:16
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