Downhill Racer [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Michael Ritchie Michael Ritchie

Overview

When the United States Olympic ski team is decimated by injuries, Coach Eugene Claire (Gene Hackman) calls in replacements. One is David Chappellet (Robert Redford, the Colorado man who is given an outside chance at best to make the team. Cold and dispassionate, David goes about his business as further injuries to the team make him a serious contender. His father (Walter Stroud) is less than enthused with his son's desire to be a champion when he states "The world's full of 'em." The coach tries to raise more money for the team, convincing backers that this is the breakthrough year. Exciting ski races from Switzerland, Austria and Colorado are employed as a documentary style is used to tell the story of the skier who turns his dreams into Olympic gold.

Product Details

Release Date:	12/01/2015
UPC:	0715515161718
Original Release:	1969
Rating:	PG
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:42:00
Sales rank:	13,312

Special Features

Interviews from 2009 with actor Robert Redford, screen writer James Salter, editor Richard Harris, prodution 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 twelve-minute promotional feature from 1969; Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Robert Redford	David Chappellet
Gene Hackman	Eugene Claire
Camilla Sparv	Carole Stahl
Jim McMullan	Johnny Creech
Karl Michael Vogler	Machet
Christian Doermer	Brumm
Kathleen Crowley	American Newspaperwoman
Dabney Coleman	Mayo
Kenneth Kirk	D.K. Bryan,Stiles
Oren Stevens	Tony Kipsmith
Jerry Dexter	Ron Engel
Walter Stroud	Mr. Chappellet, Davis's Father
Carole Carle	Lena
Rip McManus	Bruce Devore
Joe Jay Jalbert	Tommy Erb
Robin Hutton-Potts	Gabriel
Heini Schuler	Meier
Peter Rohr	Boyriven
Arnold Alpiger	Hinsch
Eddie Waldburger	Haas
Marco Walli	Istel
Rudi Gertsch	Selznick
James Sandoe	Spectator
Jenny Dexter	Ron Engel
Noam Pitlik	TV Announcer
Walter Gnilka	Austrian Journalist
Werner J. Heyking	Helgerson
Harald Schreiber	Oliviera
Harald Dietl	Journalist
Alexander Stampfer	Skier No. 16
Ulrike von Zerboni	Jeanine
Robert Brendlin	Announcer
Michael Gempart	Hotel Receptionist
Jack Ballard	Candy Vendor

Technical Credits

Richard Gregson	Producer
Michael Ritchie	Director

Editorial Reviews

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).

All Movie Guide - Michael Hastings