Thursday with Robert Redford

Downhill Racer

Michael Ritchie’s first film is a profile of an athlete learning not to be reckless. It’s strictly interesting as an example in Hollywood’s counter-cultural shift from glamor to slice of life naturalism. Starring Gene Hackman and Robert Redford, and look for younger Dabney Coleman without a mustache, Downhill Racer is as generic as its title. The 102-minute film’s based on a novel by a World War 2 U.S. Marine who graduated from University of California, Berkeley, and became a writer.

Downhill Racer—released in the year of classic Hollywood’s expiration, 1969—has another Berkeley connection and it shows. Michael Ritchie, a native of Waukesha, Wisconsin and the son of a Berkeley professor, was selected by Mr. Redford to direct this first movie for Robert Redford’s production company. Ritchie went on to direct several contest or competition-themed films, such as Smile, The Bad News Bears and The Scout. Downhill Racer was shot with both handheld and 16 mm cameras.

The year 1969 was a turning point for Robert Redford, who had worked in pictures for years without becoming a star, as his popular Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid pairing with Paul Newman was also released. Here, too, Mr. Redford plays a rebel. As Dave, son of a gruff Colorado rancher, he obsesses on a starting place and contemplates his mirror image between reckless acts. Keeping himself in Olympics-caliber shape is the main conflict. Will he make the team, get the girl and win?

Or will he wipe out, as many skiers do in Downhill Racer? Mr. Redford’s charisma doesn’t carry the ski racing movie, which was filmed in the Swiss, Austrian and French Alps—with two distinctive scenes in which a camera’s attached to a skier’s helmet. Skiing affords the movie its jolts. The lead character’s womanizing and subplot (in which he gets played by a playgirl for potential product endorsement) and a Gibraltar-sized chip on his shoulder are less than compelling, however.

Downhill Racer’s naturalism weakens what might’ve made for a thought-provoking message about the self-made man. As a ski coach, Gene Hackman, previewing his later Hoosiers role, nearly steals the show, urging the U.S. Olympic team skiers to recognize that they are “roving ambassador[s] for the American way of life.” The movie opens with windy snowdrifts as a closeup of a wheel and cable frame the manmade on the mountains, which could have cut a fresh take on whether the daredevil makes the racing champion or vice versa. Instead, Downhill Racer merely leaves the audience cold and remote.