Remembering Robert Redford, His Films, and His Influence on the Watch Community

I’m part of a generation that grew up appreciating Robert Redford, who passed away this morning at the age of 89, primarily through the lens of their parents. Specifically, in my case, through my mom, who I can remember renting The Sting for me and my sister when we were children, certainly too young to appreciate Redford’s cultural impact on a generation of moviegoers, but not too young to understand his movie star magnetism. That’s something that defies age. 

Over the years, as my movie education expanded and deepened, I began to see Redford in a series of different lights. At times, he was the consummate leading man. At others he exemplified a particular type of American authenticity and charm. As he aged, he grew into roles where he played learned experts, passing on knowledge (and movie star bona fides) to new generations of actors. Perhaps most importantly, he was an evangelist for movies, the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, and spent much of his later life promoting and elevating independent film in one way or another.

He was also, of course, an important part of the watch community and over the years has been responsible for more watch spotting Instagram posts, articles, and podcasts, than perhaps any other celebrity. His Red Sub, to us, became an extension of Redford’s persona. It was as much a part of his image as the red jacket worn by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, or Audrey Hepburn’s pearls in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The difference with Redford and his Submariner is that it was his Submariner. It wasn’t part of a costume. And that made Redford particularly special to those of us who meet in the middle of the Watch Enthusiast/Cinephile Venn Diagram. There are so many instances of movie stars wearing watches that have been picked for them, or worn as part of a contractual obligation, that we naturally revel in the idea that someone of Redford’s stature is just wearing his Rolex casually both on screen and in real life. 

Robert Redford, in a lot of ways, was the best possible ambassador for watches to the general public because of the effortlessly cool and nonchalant way he presented them. He was the antithesis of the modern watch celebrity influencer, because he wasn’t an influencer at all. He was just a guy with great taste. None of us can imagine Redford sitting for a YouTube clip where he shops for a watch collection under an arbitrary dollar amount, because the idea is preposterous. And yet somehow, simply through decades in the public eye and an uncanny ability to connect with his audience through his art, he’s influenced, in the truest sense of the word, untold numbers of watch lovers. 

The key watch in Redford’s film output is of course the “red” Sub that he wore so prominently in All the President’s Men. Last year, Danny Milton and I spent a very enjoyable hour discussing the film, Redford, and his watch, for an episode of Time on Screen, and I’d encourage anyone with even a passing interest to give that episode a listen. I don’t know a bigger Redford fan than Danny, and he has accumulated knowledge of this particular watch that is of real value to the watch community. It was worn not just in All the President’s Men, but can also be seen in The Candidate and The Electric Horseman, three classics of 1970s American cinema (to varying degrees) that helped cement Redford as an icon to movie fans, and his Submariner as an icon to the small sliver of watch lovers among them who can’t help but notice the details. 

It wasn’t just the Sub, though, that made Redford such an endearing figure to the watch community. Another notable film from his 1970s output, Three Days of the Condor, finds Redford wearing a Doxa Sharkhunter (on a Bund strap, no less). This was also, reportedly, a watch personally owned by Redford. The film is great, a wonderful example of the 1970s paranoia thriller, and a twisty and turny spy story. The Sharkhunter fits in marvelously – it’s hard to think of a more 1970s watch. And again, because it belonged to Redford himself, it adds a layer of unspoken but clear authenticity. 

Redford’s Doxa, visible under his coat in Three Days of the Condor

A personal favorite from the later period of Redford’s career is J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost from 2013. This is Redford in his older, more grizzled guise, and features him (and only him) as a sailor stranded at sea after his yacht is damaged in a storm. It’s an old fashioned survival story, and Redford wears a Seiko SKX009 throughout. There’s a certain amount of symmetry to the watch casting here that I’ve always enjoyed – I love how Redford, seemingly regardless of the era we find him, can be seen wearing simple, tool oriented divers that would have been the most logical choice for their character at the time. Wearing a Seiko, particularly at this moment in the early 2010s, was watch enthusiast catnip to a growing online enthusiast community. You really felt like Redford was one of us. It’s his everyman persona translated perfectly through the watch on his wrist. 

Redford in All is Lost

I can’t write about Robert Redford without discussing The Natural, probably my personal favorite Redford film. While it doesn’t prominently feature a watch, I found myself thinking about The Natural a lot this year in the wake of another movie that very much does feature many, many watches, to the point that it feels like an extended commercial for a major Swiss luxury brand. F1, the Brad Pitt vehicle released earlier this summer, feels like a remake, to me, of The Natural. The rough outline of the story is essentially the same in each film: an older athlete, battling demons and past trauma, returns to his sport for one last shot at glory. There are many scenes in F1 that could have been written by an AI prompt to simply lift moments from the world of 1940s baseball to a contemporary Formula 1 setting. And there are visual motifs repeated in F1 that make the connection explicit, including a stirring recreation of the most famous moment from The Natural that feels like a warmhearted tribute to the earlier film. 

The Natural

When I watched F1 in a big IMAX theater a few months ago, I enjoyed it pretty thoroughly even as I realized I was not just watching a movie, but was being sold IWC watches, and cars made by Mercedes, and certainly a whole bunch of Apple products (they did foot the bill, after all). It underscored to me something that has become obvious in recent years, that the only way a big movie, even with a big star like Brad Pitt, can be made today is with the underwriting of several huge corporations that all want to be prominently featured in the end product. In Redord’s era, at least when his fame was at its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, things were quite different, and his passing is an opportunity to not just reflect on his life and work, but the way his industry has changed, and not always for the better. It’s a change that is mirrored in the watch world, where conspicuous consumption rules the day. Redford’s films are an antidote to these ideas. What a treasure it is that his movies, and his effortless ability to communicate style, class, and empathy will always live on for anyone curious enough to seek them out. 

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