It's freezing outside. And it's gonna get colder.
Weather like this is best admired from a safe distance - like in the warm comfort of your living room. This afternoon I plan to enjoy the cold climes by watching Downhill Racer.
A much underrated movie, it came out the same year as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and failed miserably. In some ways it was buried by it's own publicity; against Redford's insistence the studio promoted it as a sports movie.
Sure, skiing does provide the films backdrop, but calling it a sports flick is like describing Disney's Jungle Book as a film about wildlife.
Downhill Racer has glamour and grit and pace and snow and some great skiing scenes too.
Released in 1969, it's filmed with a nod to the French New Wave - a handheld shot here, a jump cut there - but in a way which is neither arch nor intrusive, just cool.
Redford is meaner and more detached in this film perhaps than any he's ever made; a working class anti-hero, he finds himself on the US Olympics Skiing team through the misfortune of another downhill skier and through virtue of his own talent.
What he lacks in social skill and team spirit he makes up for on the slopes.
Which is just as well since back in the late sixties the US Olympic team is populated by wealthy amateurs, the chalets of Aspen Colorado are a rich kids' playground and it's all about the après-ski, darhhhhling.
Trying to figure out the games rich people play was something which really hit home when I first saw this film while in my teens at college - me, a local kid surrounded by all these out-of-town privileged types...what a minefield!
Of course the other thing that kept me watching it back then was the clothes. White track-suits, camel jackets, snow glasses, roll neck sweaters, faded denim, shearling coats, extreme-weather outerwear...It's what snow was made for!
For me there was a certain poignancy in the fact that the main character, David Chappellet, could so easily look the part and so brilliantly dominate the slopes and yet not fit in at all...It helped me decide to stop trying.
As a film it still packs a punch today, still has a resonance and a style. Some say Redford is much better here than he is as the Sundance Kid and in many ways this is a more substantial film.
Maybe Redford felt the same; it was the films' studio-maneuvered box office failure which motivated him to set up The Sundance Film Festival.
The film was made by Redfords' own production company, Wildwood and directed by the same guy who later made The Candidate with him, Michael Ritchie.
The overtly social and political commentary in The Candidate is more subtly explored here, but it is here none-the-less.
For example, on one level the Chappellet character is a heroic outsider challenging an otherwise archaic and feudal environment...
...and yet on another level he's a selfish protagonist, determined to further his own personal gain at any cost - his real motives hidden behind the veil of national interest...
Mmmmm, maybe it's not that subtle after all.
