-----
---- —
Director George Roy Hill, who died recently at the age of 80, specialized in making difficult material cinematic and entertaining. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the legendary outlaws, is on my all-time top 10 list. It has suspense, humor, and charm up to its eyes and only gets better with time. Mr. Hill was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Franklin Shaffner for Patton.
Four years later, George Roy Hill got his Oscar for The Sting (1971), the best scam movie ever made. Again we have Newman and Redford, who could charm the bark off a tree, as con men extraordinary. They spend lots of time and money setting up sinister blow-hard Robert Shaw. Even though we know it’s coming, we’re still delightfully surprised by the complicated scheme. Don’t blink!
Kurt Vonnegutt’s Slaughterhouse Five (1972) seems not only uncinematic but unfilmable. But Mr. Hill ably filmed this convoluted story of American Bill Pilgrim, normal as apple pie, and the Dresden Fire Storm of World War II. A cast of complete unknowns perhaps helps. Not to all tastes but an icon to Vonnegutt’s many fans.
To the contrary, John Irving’s marvelous The World According to Garp (1982) has almost too much story, but George Roy Hill convincingly boils it down into a cinematic gem. Robin Williams as Garp and Glenn Close as his feminist mother Jenny lead a stellar cast. John Lithgow’s turn as a transsexual pro football player (“the old tight end Roberta”) is alone worth the price of admission.
Paul Newman returns as a profane, to-hell-with-the-rules ice hockey player in Slap Shot (1977). To say this is one of the best movies ever made about hockey may be damning with faint praise, but it is raunchy and funny throughout. Beware network editing!
The unlikely, but serendipitous casting of Peter Sellers as a serious concert pianist sets the stage for the underrated The World of Henry Orient (1964). He is absolutely beset by two teen-age girls who fawn on his every note and virtually stalk him around New York City. In lesser hands, this film could be average or worse; with Mr. Hill’s expert direction it become a very telling comedy.
All of the films in this column are available on DVD. All are for 12 and up.
Rusty Hammond has been writing the Mr. Movie column since 1996. It appears in several newspapers in North Carolina.
