by Melodie Miller © 2019
Downhill Racer, Gene Hackman and Robert Redford (Courtesy of IMDB.com)
Downhill Racer (1969) Movie Synopsis: David Chappellet (Robert Redford) is an arrogant and overly confident downhill skier. On the Olympic ski team but standing in as an alternate, he is called to Switzerland to compete after a teammate is injured. He quickly becomes an adversary within the team through his smug behavior and unconventional techniques on the slopes, falling into conflict with his coach (Gene Hackman).
“What’s past is prologue.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
An industry was born when a handsome and rugged Coloradan glamorized the sport of skiing and America began its life as a world contender on the international slopes of ski competition.
Before Gore-tex and waterproof breathable fabrics I was a young girl in search of an identity. Everything that happened up to this point will set the stage for what is to come thereafter.
It was the first day at a new school, Junior high, seventh grade. I felt small and solitary.
Marcus Whitman Junior High School, Seattle Washington (1969) (Courtesy of Marcus Whitman Junior High School Archives)
A short girl, like me, with a blond bobbed haircut, stopped me in the hall and said, “My big sister said I should find the cutest girls in the school and make them join my gang. You’re cute, you’re in my gang. Get a ride on Sunday to my house and we’ll go see Down Hill Racer? My name is Dev.”
Dev was one of the “cool girls” at school.
Sunday arrived and my mom drove me to the house of the “cool girl” named Dev with the blond bobbed haircut. She wanted to watch Robert Redford ski fast and I liked to ski so it sounded good to me.
I was in Seattle. It was raining. I didn’t know who Robert Redford was.
I wore a short dress because it was in style, and I am talented in the way of fashion. I read Vogue. My legs look good.
My mom drove very fast to Blue Ridge and stopped the car with a jerk at the foot of a very steep driveway that led to a newly, mid century modern house.
Mid-century modern house (Photograph non-accredited)
I push hard with my whole body on the heavy station wagon door that creaked open to an unstable position which I hold in place with one arm.
Plymouth Chrysler (1969) (Photograph courtesy of MyMopar.com, Youtube)
Swinging my bare legs out of the car and watching for puddles, I placed my two feet carefully onto the wet driveway. The door slammed with a crash behind me and I remember slamming my fingers in the car door when I was five. But that didn’t happen this time. My mom drove away.
I walked up the flawless path that led to the house, and along the way, I thought, “My new friend lives in a rich person’s house.” I see a gardener working outside in the rain, trimming the trees with professional tools. I thought, “That man is Japanese, and he is a long way from home, gardening for a stranger.”
He appeared to work in a very serious manner, making the boxed hedge very sharp and clipping the miniature leaves with great force.
Japanese Gardens at Cedar Hill, Roxbury Connecticut. (Photo courtesy of The Garden Conservancy.org)
I knocked on the front door, and my knuckles turned red with repeated impact. It was cold outside, and my good-looking legs wished they were covered with pants. Then I rang the doorbell. The right-hand side of the royal red lacquer-painted, double door opens mysteriously slowly, and I expect to see the black and white version of Nosferatu’s claw-like hand emerging along its edge. Instead, a grand-motherly looking person stood in front of me.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Dev’s mother.”
“Dev’s mother looks ancient, as old as my grandmother, and she is rather plump,” I thought.
My mom was skinny and young; too young, I heard people say. Dev’s dad was a doctor; my dad lived in a different house than me and my mom was a waitress. I keep that fact to myself.
I stepped over the threshold into a colder and cavernous room that hung precariously over an ice-age ravine. It felt odd because my warm and crowded house sat firmly on the terra adjacent to a gully. This house was held in place by stilts sunk into the glacials silt.
“Might this house might slide down the hill at the next earthquake?” My neighbor’s house fell off its stilts in a mudslide and three people died: a mom, a dad and a newborn baby. I wondered when the rain would stop falling and hoped an earthquake didn’t happen now.
The clacking sound coming from my shiny new shoes hitting the slippery tile floor echoed across the room and bounced off the stark white walls.
Opposite the front door was one large, seamless window that looked west towards Puget Sound and out to the Olympic Mountains. It was the same view I saw from the city park near my house. My new friend, Dev, with the weird blond bobbed haircut, lived in a rich person’s house in her own private park.
The Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, from Seattle Washington (Photograph courtesy of Adobe Stock )
Dev appeared in the arched opening of the long hallway on the north side of the cavernous room.
“Come see my room,” she said.
She was wearing nice clothes, new clothes, which means something but I’m not sure what. I followed her down the hall. We entered a grand room with a garden view. She opened the top drawer of her dresser.
“Look at this,” Dev said.
I gazed at her socks, folded in pairs and arranged in groups by color, segregated by rigid dividers. It was a beautiful sight. My socks lie in a pile at the bottom of the dresser drawer that I share with my sister. Each morning we select a pair randomly, not concerned with finding its mate.
Dev was not an only child but a “surprise” she told me. She had two older sisters who were married. I couldn’t make sense of this familial arrangement.
“I get all the attention from my parents,” she said, “because I was a surprise.” I don’t understand what she means. I am the oldest of six children with a lot of surprises at my house, mostly stray dogs.
Two more “cool” girls arrived, and their clothes were nice and new. Mine were hand-me-downs from the “older girl” across the street from my grandmother. One of the “cool” girls, the one with dark hair, was wearing a button-down boy shirt with the tails hanging out over a knee length, A-line skirt made of fabric copied from a Chanel plaid. The other girl was wearing a mini, tailless shirt dress with bobby socks and brown and white saddle shoes that matched her hair. I dreamed of becoming a fashion designer so I was creating a mental archive of the clothes people wear.
“Let’s go,” Dev, the blond girl said.
We all piled into the grandmother looking mother’s German car that proudly displays an erect airplane propeller on its chest. “I Want You” from Abby Road played on the radio. We all sang along with the radio: “I want you; I want you so bad, it’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad.” We all laugh. The rain continued falling from the sky and I am relieved to drive away from the cold, cavernous, “ready to slide down the hill in a mudslide” house where my friend Dev lives. I must be sure to never spend the night there.
Mercedes-Benz 280 SE (1969) (Photo courtesy of Carscoops.com, Youtube)
“Robert Redford, he’s so dreamy,” the dark-haired girl with the football helmet-shaped haircut said. Her name was Jan. Her dad was a doctor, and her mother was a doctor too. I’m not sure how that kind of thing happens. The other “cool” girl was named Marian and had dusty auburn color hair. She was the one whose hair color matched her shoes. Her hair was cut like a Chatty Cathy. Chatty Cathy was a long dead doll. Marian’s dad was a coroner, a “kind of a doctor” she tells me. I decide that when I get home, I will look in the dictionary for the definition of “coroner.”
Downhill Racer, Robert Redford (Courtesy of IMDB.com)
Something was happening. My new friends were smart, they had doctor dads and new clothes. I felt special.
My new friends had weird haircuts, and I wondered if I would need to cut my hair to be cool like them. My hair was long, parted down the middle, like Cher’s. All three girls had older sisters who told them “gross stories about boys.” When I babysit, I tell my younger siblings “The Tell-Tale Heart” story, and we all scream and laugh. I don’t have any “gross boy” stories. I felt young and immature with these girls. I was quiet.
The old-looking mother dropped us off at the movie theater. It was still raining. I had never heard of Robert Redford, but I don’t tell the other girls. I know that a downhill racer skis very fast on steep icy slopes and wins metals because I am a skier. Usually, the winners were French and named Claude. They wore tight suits that showed all their muscles and when they reach the bottom of the hill, they threw their arms up over their heads in surprise.
Downhill Racer, Opening Scene (Courtesy of IMDB.com)
“Down Hill Racer” started, and a violin soundtrack filled my eardrums while the camera panned over distant mountain tops that were not ski slopes. That seems strange. The soundtrack shifted to piano keys ominously plunking over a close-up of a ticking stop watch.
A faceless hand snapped a Look ski binding onto a red leather Henke boot with stainless steel buckles running up the front over the ski racer foot. The red leather boot stopped just above his unprotected ankle. The webbing ski strap pulled tight around the boot.
Downhill Racer, Opening Scene (Courtesy of IMDB.com)
A snug suit and nothing more covered the ski racer’s legs. A violin played dramatically as the camera zoomed in on a pair of long, narrow skis slicing back and forth like two hands carving a Thanksgiving turkey. The camera panned to the smooth face of a man who pulled his goggles over his eyes while the soundtrack shifted to the sound of a beeping heart. The man was wearing a USA Olympic ski team bib.
He launched from the starter’s gate crouched in a tuck then the frame froze and the title DOWNHILL RACER flashed onto the screen. The skier immediately caught his ski edge on a chunk of ice and crashed.
Downhill Racer, Opening Scene(Courtesy of IMDB.com)
“There is an accident on the course,” the voice over said in English with a French accent. A helicopter landed, taking the broken skier away.
Downhill Racer, Opening Scene(Courtesy of IMDB.com)
A man with freckles, bushy blond eyebrows and long shaggy hair arrived to replace the crashed USA Olympic team downhill racer. The new racer wore a pair of cowboy boots and chewed gum with an open mouth. His attitude seemed strange; maybe arrogant. He looked like someones dad.
“That’s him,” the three girls whisper in unison. “Robert Redford.” The arrogant dad looking man with freckles and bushy hair, wearing cowboy boots and chewing gum with an open mouth was Robert Redford.
I looked at my new friends in wonderment.
“Where is the dreamy guy?”
Downhill Racer, Robert Redford (Courtesy of IMDB.com)
Melodie Dawn Miller 