But gradually they fell out and then Soderbergh discovered that a project he had unearthed and

But gradually they fell out, and then Soderbergh discovered that a project he had unearthed and developed – Quiz Show – was something that Redford had manoeuvred away for himself. And yet Redford claimed to be bewildered that Soderbergh was upset.Power, ego and money can do strange things in Hollywood – and Redford had a reputation already. The Way We Were came from a novel by Arthur Laurents, and Laurents himself was hired as screenwriter on the picture – by the director Sydney Pollack (who has made a handful of Redford’s pictures) and producer Ray Stark But things didn’t go well. Sides were drawn up: Laurents and Barbra Streisand against everyone else. Pollock told Laurents that Redford had problems with the script Let’s meet, then, said Laurents But Redford was too wary to sit down with him. So Laurents was fired – and later re-hired as the project got into trouble. He had a tough view of the actor: “What it boiled down to was Redford finally saying, ‘Well, her part is bigger!’.. he’s such a weasel.

He’s impossible, egocentric.”Don’t rule out the chance that all these things are true: that Robert Redford is a shy gentleman, and chronically manipulative; that Sundance is one of the great, pioneering ideas in movie production, and an institution that has betrayed itself; that Redford is a phenomenal movie star but a rather repressed actor.These days, you have to remind yourself of the vigour, the charm, the casual glory that held in, say, Barefoot in the Park, The Chase, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; The Way We Were; The Sting; The Great Waldo Pepper; Three Days of the Condor; All The President’s Men. And don’t forget how flat-out awful he was in The Great Gatsby and The Natural, roles for which his mythic grace seemed so suited, but which turned out hollow.I think it’s cruel to blame him for Sundance. So many novice film-makers owe so much to the place, and if the film-makers ended up greedy, devious and vainglorious once they got a shot of success, well, that is human nature, not the fault of Redford. Perhaps he should have moved on, leaving the management to others. Whatever, in history, it will look like a wise and far-sighted gesture, just as his steady devotion to narrating wildlife documentaries attests to his allegiance to that cause. Even now, he is planning to direct a film, Aloft, about men obsessed with peregrine falcons.As a director, he has run out of energy As an actor, he does seem confounded and hurt by old age.

But that may just be a way of saying that he always lacked the humour, the irony and the inventiveness of a Nicholson or a Pacino. And he may be too old now, or too suspicious, to trust a younger person who offered him an unequivocally great part as an old man. I don’t envisage Redford as Lear, but I think he is in touch enough with the sadness of old age to do something that would surprise us all.If we judge him a failure, he may shrug and say it’s none of our business, just the way a stupid world works. Suppose he was always a throwback – as beautiful and yet as simple-minded as Gary Cooper. Did Cooper invent Sundance? Did Cooper produce All The President’s Men? Did Cooper care about creatures that would never earn a story in the media? Robert Redford has altered our idea of what a movie star might be. And if he is difficult inside, then I suspect that no one has suffered from that more than him..

Walter Salles’s road movie charts each stage of the odyssey two young Argentinians make around South America by flashing up the number of kilometres they have covered, first on a motorbike, then on foot and by boat. By the end of their eight-month journey, which has taken them through Argentina, Chile, the Amazon Basin, Peru and Venezuela, the total stands at around 12,000km. So much for the geography – the implication is that the emotional distance the two friends have travelled is infinitely greater. Of course, any number of backpacking students could claim to have been changed by the peregrinations of their year off; the difference here is that one of the travellers was Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, who would become better known as Che, revolutionary, idealist and the sainted face on T-shirts and posters the world over. Their transport is an ancient Norton motorbike that sputters and wheezes and will more than once pitch them both into the dirt, but these two are carefree souls, undismayed by having to sleep beneath the stars or scrounge for food.