Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer, which arrives on Criterion special-edition DVD next week, is remembered today primarily for its winning star performance. Yet as evidenced by this November 1969 piece from the Sports Illustrated archives by author and sports columnist Dan Jenkins, when the film came out, its male lead, some young whippersnapper named Robert Redford, was an unknown entity, an actor “who may be more familiar to moviegoers as the subtly humorous sidekick of Paul Newman in the new western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Geared toward skiers, Jenkins’s piece profiles the soon-to-be megastar but is mostly about his love of the sport (Redford studied Alpine racing in Europe) and his determination to get a movie about it made.
1969
101 min
Color
1.78:1
Categories: Clippings
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