OVP: The Electric Horseman (1979)

Film: The Electric Horseman (1979)

Stars: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Valerie Perrine, Willie Nelson, John Saxon

Director: Sydney Pollack

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Robert Redford is, of course, an iconic movie star and film director (we'll get into the film direction part of his career next week).  But if you think about his impact on Hollywood, there's a word that comes to mind more than any other that's part of his legacy: Sundance.  This is of course the name of his character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but it's also the name of the film festival that Redford helped to launch.  Redford bought land in Utah with some of his salary from Butch Cassidy, and would even film a portion of Jeremiah Johnson on this land.  In 1978, though, Redford would use his connections with Utah to found the Sundance Film Festival.  The initial festival was focused on previously-made movies, but by the 1990's the festival had grown, eventually becoming the most important film festival in America.  In recent years, it has become an important launchpad for major Oscar contenders like Manchester by the Sea, Call Me By Your Name, and the Best Picture-winning CODA.

(Spoilers Ahead) Redford didn't have a specific film tied with his early days at Sundance, so I instead am going this week with a western from around the time that Redford was founding Sundance (and just before he'd become a film director), The Electric Horseman.  The film has Redford as Sonny, a washed-up former rodeo champ who spends most of his days now as a spokesmodel for a breakfast cereal.  Sonny is a drunk, a shell of his former self, and also about to get fired during a large corporate merger.  He's also being harangued by an ambitious young reporter named Hallie (Fonda), who is trying to get a story about Sonny, and she gets one when he steals the horse he is a co-sponsor of the cereal with, trying to free it since it's being mistreated by the corporation.  They set off an adventure across the country, intent on letting the horse free before the corporation can get it back, and of course along the way...they find love.

The Electric Horseman is maybe the silliest concept for a movie I've seen in a while.  If the plot above makes no sense, that's because the movie doesn't hold up to this level of scrutiny.  Why, exactly, does a cereal company care so much about one horse, and also why will this throw off a potential merger deal?  These are questions that you shouldn't ask if you want to enjoy the film, which is quite enjoyable, to be fair.  Fonda & Redford, whom we already saw had chemistry in Barefoot in the Park, are at the peak of their star charisma in this movie.  Both had spent the past decade being some of Hollywood's most reliable leading players, and there's something about seeing two iconic stars play off each other that's breathtaking.  This is what was lost when we moved to making superheroes into movie stars rather than actors-getting to view an actual superpower, cause you don't get more radiant than Redford & Fonda at their celebrity peaks.

The film received one Oscar nomination, for Best Sound.  I don't really get this-the sound recording isn't all that interesting, and you could argue there was more opportunity to lean in on the sound design a bit earlier in the film, with the clanging in the casinos and the opening rodeo sequences.  But I do wonder if it got nominated on the richness of Willie Nelson's voice.  Nelson was making his film debut as an actor after a decade of being one of the faces of the Outlaw Country era, and would go on to star in a number of films in the next couple of years (right around the same time that Dolly Parton, his occasional collaborator, was becoming a movie star).  He recorded five songs for this, including a solo version of "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," and if that's what the Academy was interested in...I can hardly blame them (Willie Nelson being long one of my favorite singers).