Downhill Racer [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Director Michael Ritchie's ongoing satirical spin on the American Dream is dressed up in quasi-documentary fashion in Downhill Racer. Robert Redford stars as an Olympic-grade skier, whose talent is matched only by his aloof self-involvement. As the cocksure Redford rises to the top of his class, he discards any emotional attachments that might impede his progress, ranging from girlfriends to his own father. When Redford finally attains his goal in life, the thrill of victory is an empty one indeed. The cold-bloodedness of Redford's character may have worked against Downhill Racer at the box office; on the other hand, Ritchie's similarly structured political satire The Candidate offered a "warmer" Redford -- but it, too, was a box-office disappointment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: DDM2.0
• Encoding: NTSC
• Screen: Color, Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Features:
  • New video interviews with Robert Redford, screenwriter James Salter, film editor Richard Harris, production manager Walter Coblenz, and former downhill skier Joe Jay Jalbert, who served as a technical adviser, ski double, and cameraman
  • Audio excerpts from a 1977 American Film Institute seminar with director Michael Ritchie
  • How Fast?, a rare 12-minute promotional featurette
  • Theatrical trailer
  • A booklet featuring an essay by critic Todd McCarthy

AWARDS

• British Academy of Film and Television Arts

•     Won Best Actor - 1970 (Robert Redford)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Robert Redford - David Chappellet
       Gene Hackman - Eugene Claire
       Camilla Sparv - Carole Stahl
       Karl Michael Vogler - Machet
       Jim McMullan - Johnny Creech

• Director:

  Michael Ritchie

• Producer:

  Richard Gregson

• Book Author:

  Oakley Hall

• Screenwriter:

  James Salter

• Cinematographer:

  Brian Probyn

• Composer (Music Score):

  Kenyon Hopkins

• Songwriter:

  Harold Arlen, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer, Kostia Palarmas, Spiro Samara

• Editor:

  Nick Archer, Richard A. Harris

• Art Director:

  Nick Archer, Ian Whittaker

REVIEW:

• If any film could be described as "exhilaratingly dispassionate," Michael Ritchie's icy take on the world of professional athletics would be it. One of a pair of image-skewering films the director made with mega-star Robert Redford at the height of his popularity -- 1972's The Candidate being the other -- Downhill Racer never goes for the easy satirical punchline in its analysis of Redford's arrogant Olympic skier, David Chappellet. Instead, the movie has documentary-style snippets of his life on and off the slopes, and the ski scenes and supporting characters are conveyed with so much scruffy, propulsive realism that David -- the hub that holds them all together -- seems all the more shallow and undeserving. In the end, Ritchie and Redford expose the time-honored fallacy that a talented performer is as passionate and charismatic outside of the spotlight as he or she is in it. Although very much a piece with the late-'60s, early-'70s New Hollywood trend towards unsavory protagonists and social exposés, Downhill Racer's unflinching portrait of hollowness almost bears more in common with the empty anti-heroes of such literary works as John Updike's Rabbit novels, John Cheever's Falconer, or Jerzy Kosinski's Being There (the latter of which Hal Ashby would potently adapt for the screen in 1979). ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

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