What does a hero look like?
By the time Robert Redford and his smile sauntered onscreen in the 1960s, that was not a simple question to answer. The movie business was in a state of upheaval, and the world was, too. The Production Code, which had long dictated who the good guys and bad guys were and how you could tell them apart, was fading out of relevance. Political and social unrest led a rising generation to believe those binaries weren’t so clear-cut off screen, too.
Into that world Redford brought charisma and talent and a face built for leading-man roles, and for decades he embodied all kinds of heroes. Not really the burly action figure type, and not the kind constantly leaping out of planes; the Redford hero is more intellectual, more steadfast, more charming and, on occasion, a bit more devilish.
His extensive filmography contains multitudes, but a few of his most famous roles — or just the most fun ones — point to the ways Redford defined certain sorts of Hollywood heroes, and showed us how it’s done.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Outlaw
It would be no stretch to use the word “iconic” for Redford’s turn as Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, in George Roy Hill’s 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Redford and Paul Newman, as Cassidy, tear up the screen as outlaws robbing trains and evading consequences, being chased by their own posse. This is a buddy movie in which its heroes, all-American romanticized criminals, are on the run for most of the film. Yet you want to be them. They reject societal conventions and the rules of right and wrong, and answer to their own sense of justice. The Sundance Kid, with his steely nerves and composure, is an emblem of a certain kind of cool masculinity, loyal and unafraid.
No wonder Redford took his character’s name from this film and made a whole life mission from it, launching the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival to foster independent filmmakers and artists, a move that changed the landscape of American cinema. Sometimes you just have to make your own way in the world.
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