Mountain FogRETROSPECT: THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER (1975)
May 26th 2009 07:00
In 1975, director George Roy Hill, actor Robert Redford and screenwriter William Goldman were a particularly hot trio, all either at or approaching the zenith of their respective careers. The ascension of all three had started six years earlier with the stellar Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film that destroyed box offices worldwide with its sublime mix of easy charm and potent subtext.
So when Hill, Redford and Goldman came together again for The Great Waldo Pepper, expectations were high for another gangbuster. Strange then that this sometimes-exhilarating film foundered at the box office, it’s slightly odd mix of humour and darkness alienating audiences and baffling critics.
In The Great Waldo Pepper, Robert Redford plays the titular character, a barnstormer of the late 1920s and former World War I pilot. Pepper travels from small town to small town in Nebraska, offering joy flights and often exaggerating his accomplishments to impress the wide-eyed clientele. It’s a skinny living, being made harder by increasing competition from other barnstormers and the coming of stifling government legislation, designed to promote a safer and more palatable brand of air travel.
In order to keep his passion as his job, Pepper, along with new partner, Axel Olsson (Bo Svenson), is forced into riskier work, a career path that will have it’s share of tragedy and also eventually push the quickly fossilising flyer towards Hollywood, where he’ll be made to ply his trade in front of the camera for moneyed studios and unsympathetic film directors.
Both on paper and on screen, The Great Waldo Pepper has many things going for it. There’s no doubt that Roy Hill had a major part to play in getting the film off the ground with his involvement as producer and director, and the filmmaker and former air force pilot’s passion for the barnstormers’ era of flimsy planes and flippant stunts runs through the production like its lifeblood.
Hill also had a large part to play in the original tale, and when he and Goldman sat down to work on the story, they found it naturally fell into three neat acts – practically a screenwriter’s dream. What’s more, the film features brilliant cinematography by the legendary Robert Surtees and some of the most outrageous and heart-stopping stunts you’re ever likely to witness. Of course, talking from of an audience’s perspective, The Great Waldo Pepper’s biggest asset was the biggest star of the time, Robert Redford.
Robert Redford was perhaps the obvious choice to play Waldo Pepper, but maybe not quite the right one.
And yet, Redford is perhaps the biggest problem with the film. It’s as much a subtle problem of casting as it is one of performance. Redford at the time was such an engaging performer that any slight darkness the filmmaker’s were trying to weave into the first act to warn the audience of the bad times to come was completely outshined by the actor’s breezy charm.
It’s a problem that manifests itself late in the film also, when Waldo’s willing collusion in a dark ending doesn’t quite make sense within the frame of the character as played by Redford. Perhaps guilty of some of the blame is Goldman, whose script struggles to balance both the humour and poignancy of the whole story, adding to this slightly tone-deaf experience.
The ultimate result was a film that failed to find a place with audiences, and The Great Waldo Pepper, against all industry insider predictions, performed poorly at the box office. It’s this poor commercial history that makes the film worthy of a revisit – not as a forgotten classic, but rather as a movie that was admirable for its ambition, but understandable in its failure to find a place in the rich environment of mid seventies US cinema. The Great Waldo Pepper ticked all the right boxes during its production and rarely had the stars aligned to seemingly bless a film with success, but as Goldman himself once commented about the film, “Sometimes you do it right, and it still doesn’t work.”
Check out the trailer for The Great Waldo Pepper below:
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Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
It's always interesting to revisit some of these films though, quite often you find that the critical battering they took at the time wasn't justified to such an extent, despite their obvious imperfections. I guess this trio had a lot to live up to after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Comment by MVD
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Dave, it really took a battering at the box office - reviews weren't too bad, although quite a few complained of the tonal problems. Definitely an interesting film to check out though.
Mike - I totally agree: the 70s was awesome period for American cinema, and this does have some fantastic moments. I'd perhaps downgrade the massive bowl of popcorn to a small bag of skittles and you'll be fine.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Waldo is a curio that holds some merits care of Roy Hill's focus. Totally agree that a grittier star would have elevated the finale. Some fine observations you made.
I am just reading Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade for the 3rd time and it is interesting to watch the film with his intentions in mind...almost elevates the work.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Yeah, having read Adventures I really, really wanted to like this film, and I did, but I tended to agree with the audience more than Goldman - or so I figured, because his assertion that the film couldn't work with Redford was right, I thought, but for different reasons - the ending being a major sticking point, for example.
I love Redford in most of his roles, and in a way he's awesome here, but it just contributes to the weird lack of discernible tone.
You can imagine this reading brilliantly at the script stage - I just wish they'd made it into a slightly better movie. It could have been one of the greats.
Comment by James Rickard
unlucky_ fishermen.com
Angling Fish
Check this out...
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Great point about another actor pulling off the beginning! And this may really isolate the ultimate problem being in the way the film was written, because it was a rare case where the part was written for a particular actor - in this case Redford. So, perhaps if the film had been written with not such a particular actor in mind the script would have turned out differently.