The first movie Robert Redford ever saw in a cinema: “I remember being blown away”
Some are just actors, others are stars, and a few might get lucky enough to become megastars, but there’s only one titan of cinema, Robert Redford, who sadly died in 2025 at 89, transcending what it meant to be on the big screen.
Not only did he make great movies both in front of and behind the camera, but he also used his considerable influence to promote other people’s work through his wildly successful Sundance Film Festival, and his death left a huge hole in the world of film, one that will likely never be filled.
As is the case with every actor, Redford’s life and career were shaped by a number of releases. In terms of his own movies, it was Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid that really put him on the map, while Ordinary People proved that he was just as capable of directing as he was performing.
On the other hand, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies & videotape helped Sundance carve its space while a string of classics from the 1940s and 1950s helped him come of age, leading one to wonder where Redford was before it all.
As part of an interview with Moviemaker, the Oscar winner was asked if he remembered the very first film he ever saw in the cinema, to which he helpfully and enthusiastically responded, “I do! It was Fantasia, and I remember being blown away by it”.
Released during a pivotal time for Disney, Fantasia is a really strange movie to watch in the 21st century, which offers a series of unconnected cartoon shorts set to various pieces of classical music, of which everyone remembers ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ that casts Mickey Mouse as a bumbling magician who loses control over his powers. The entire movie was built around revitalising the rodent, whose popularity had significantly dropped off from its peak, such that without the success of Fantasia, Disney’s beloved mascot might not exist in the way he does today.
Redford would have just turned four years old when the film first hit cinema screens. He doesn’t say if this is when he first saw it, but we can assume he would have seen it when he was young and not when it gained a second life as a so-called ‘head movie’ during the swinging sixties. The world was a very different place back then, as was the cinemagoing experience, and Redford seemed to pine for when going to the movies meant so much more than catching the latest release.
“It used to be you went and had a whole cultural experience, cartoons, shorts, newsreels and no trailers,” he reminisced, and it is this nostalgia that inspired him to launch Sundance Cinemas in 2007, a chain of movie theatres designed to return the medium to a simpler age.
“What if we brought that back with [a] Sundance product,” he mused, “We could show a variety of films in a centre with a bar, a restaurant and a film library? Where the whole community could gather for a community experience? They’ve been very successful.”
However you choose to enjoy it, Fantasia is a blast, and unsurprising that it left such a big impact on a small boy who would go on to become a giant success.
