Robert Redford passed away
18.08.1936 - 16.09.2025

"Out of Africa" 24 sheet poster on display at the Imperial Bio, Copenhagen, 1986. Picture: Thomas Hauerslev

There was more, much more to Robert Redford than god like good looks. That he was the most stunningly handsome of any Hollywood leading man since Rudolph Valentino was way beyond dispute. Hollywood producers, never famed for their powers of insight, never seeing much below the surface, dismissed him out of hand as just another himbo. Even Ben Bradlee, a shrewd, resourceful hard bitten newsman, rising to the top of his profession as editor of the prestigious Washington Post was less than enthusiastic about a film project that was to alter the course of history and become the best advertisement the paper ever had. As Bradlee told Time Magazine:

“He kept saying, ‘You’ve got to trust us.’ We didn’t understand that. We were thinking, ‘Why the hell should we trust Robert Redford? Why should we turn our reputations over to him?’ “

Why indeed? Carl Bernstein had the answer:

"They (Redford) did a spectacular reporting job to do this movie. Good reporters get their sources to trust them, and that’s what they did with us.” The rest was history.

Shakespeare had Redford’s measure:

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus.”

He was a consummate colleague for his fellow actors, from Paul Newman in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to Meryl Streep in that glorious and much loved shining masterpiece "Out of Africa", via "The Sting". This writer has never seen a cinema audience so entertained, enraptured and delighted by a film as by "The Sting". What a show! He was always there on screen, to capture the spirit of the age, from the heady nostalgia of "The Way We Were" to the chilling paranoia of "All the President’s Men".

He was a master of the 70mm epic. In "A Bridge Too Far" he more than holds his own in a veritable firmament of stars:

“Ah, I suppose you're wondering why I called you here. I want to tell you that I've decided to cross the river like George Washington; standing in the prow of the boat.”

As Denys in "Out of Africa" he seems to sum up his own life in these words:

“I'm with you because I choose to be with you. I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life. I'm willing to pay for mine. To be lonely sometimes. To die alone, if I have to. I think that's fair.”

His lasting achievement will also be Sundance, the most prestigeous festival and celebration of independent film of them all. Through his tireless championing of new talent, he launched the careers of Quentin Tarantino and many others. His was a monumental talent, his greatest works more than just films, but events, landmarks and monuments to that great Seventh Art which he did so much to champion and celebrate - Cinema.