The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Close), and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress (Basinger). Many of the baseball scenes were filmed in 1983 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, New York, built in 1937 and demolished in 1988. All-High Stadium, also in Buffalo, stood in for Chicago's Wrigley Field in a key scene.
Plot
In the 1910s Midwest, Roy Hobbs learns baseball from his father, who suffers a fatal heart attack. Lightning strikes a nearby tree, from which Roy makes a baseball bat, which he brands with a lightning bolt and the legend "Wonderboy".
In 1923, 19-year-old Roy leaves behind his girlfriend, Iris, for a tryout with the Chicago Cubs arranged by scout Sam Simpson. On the train, Sam and Roy are snubbed by "The Whammer", a legendary ballplayer, and syndicatedsportswriter Max Mercy. While stopped at a carnival, Sam bets Max that Roy can strike out the Whammer in three pitches. Roy does so, drawing the attention of Harriet Bird, who has a murderous fixation on champion athletes. In her Chicago hotel room, Harriet shoots Roy in the stomach before throwing herself out the window. Health complications derail his baseball career.
Despite his age and unknown past, in 1939 the 35-year-old Roy is signed to the New York Knights, Major League Baseball's last-place team. Pop Fisher, the team's manager and part-owner, nearly demotes Roy to the Class B league, but is impressed by his power hitting during batting practice. During a home game against the Phillies, Pop benches star player Bartholomew "Bump" Bailey and has Roy pinch hit. Using "Wonderboy", Roy hits a triple that knocks the cover off the ball, making him an overnight sensation.
News of Roy's growing fame reaches Iris, Roy's high school girlfriend now living in Chicago. In a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Bump dies after crashing through the outfield wall while trying to make a catch. Roy becomes the starting right fielder, and his sensational hitting pulls the Knights up the National League standings. Assistant manager Red Blow reveals that Pop was forced to sell controlling interest of the team to a new majority owner, the Judge, but Pop will regain ownership if the Knights win the pennant. Unlike Bump, Roy refuses to be bribed by the Judge into throwing the season.
Max, now covering the Knights, spends weeks unsuccessfully trying to uncover Roy's past. While in the stands behind home plate during a team practice, Max sees Roy pitch a fastball that almost tears through the backstop's netting and recognizes him from striking out the Whammer in 1923. He introduces Roy to Gus Sands, a powerful bookie, and Roy begins a romance with Memo Paris, Pop's niece. Pop believes Memo is bad luck, and Roy and the Knights find themselves in a slump, which continues into a Wrigley Field game against the Cubs. Spotting Iris in the stands, Roy shatters the scoreboard clock with a game-winning home run. They meet briefly, and after another win the following day, Roy walks Iris home, and she reveals she has a teenage son.
Their reunion restores Roy's prowess and the Knights surge into first place, but he is poisoned by Memo, who is colluding with Sands and the Judge. Roy learns that lasting damage from Harriet's silver bullet could prove fatal if he continues playing. Without him, the Knights lose three games in a row, setting up a one-game playoff against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Knights Field. The Judge offers him $20,000 (equivalent to $452,000in 2024) to throw the game, reveals he has already bribed another player, and threatens to expose Roy's connection to Harriet's death. Memo pleads with Roy to accept the payoff, while Iris assures him that he will always be remembered as a great ballplayer. Roy rejects the bribe and is almost shot by an angry Memo.
During the game, Roy deduces that pitcher Al Fowler was also bribed, but convinces him to play his best. In the dugout, Roy receives from Iris a note revealing that Roy is the father of Iris's son. With the Knights trailing in the bottom of the ninth inning, Roy hits a foul ball that splits "Wonderboy". He tells batboy Bobby Savoy to pick him another bat, and Bobby retrieves one he made himself, the "Savoy Special". Bleeding through his uniform, Roy smashes a home run into the stadium lights, winning the game and the pennant. Back on their farm, Iris watches Roy and their son play catch in the same field where Roy and his father played.
Malcolm Kahn and Robert Bean acquired the rights to Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel The Natural in 1976.[4]Phil Dusenberry wrote the first adaptation.[4] In October 1981, Roger Towne, a Columbia Pictures story editor and brother of Robert Towne, quit to produce and write the screenplay, with Bean set to direct and Kahn co-producing.[5][4]
In 1983, newly formed Tri-Star Pictures acquired the rights to the film adaptation, its first production.[4] It was Robert Redford's first acting role in three years.[4]
The film's producers stated in the DVD extras that the film was not intended to be a literal adaptation of the novel, but was merely "based on" the novel. Malamud's daughter said on one of the DVD extras that her father had seen the film, and his take on it was that it had "legitimized him as a writer."[6]
Darren McGavin was cast late in the process as gambler Gus Sands and was uncredited in the film. Due to a disagreement, he chose not to be credited, though Levinson later wanted to credit him and McGavin said no.[7][8] Levinson stated on the DVD extras for the 2007 edition that because there had been too little time during post-production to find a professional announcer willing and able to provide voice-over services, Levinson recorded that part of the audio track himself.[7]
Two-thirds of the scenes were filmed in Buffalo, New York, mostly at War Memorial Stadium,[9] built in 1937 and demolished in 1989. At the time of filming, the stadium was the home of the Buffalo Bisons, a Minor League Baseball team who were then playing in the Double A level Eastern League and would move up to Triple A and the International League in 1985 (that team was actually the second Buffalo Bisons to play at the stadium. The original Bisons had actually played in the Triple A International League and were tenants at the stadium from 1961–1970). With a spectator capacity of 46,206 it was the second largest venue in the Minors in 1983/84 (behind Denver's then 75,123 capacity Mile High Stadium), and the sixth largest regular Minor League stadium in history. One quirk with War Memorial Stadium that was never mentioned in the film was that although it had long been used as a baseball stadium, it was in fact a rectangular shaped venue that had been primarily built for football. As such the right and right center field fences were both considerably shorter (by between 20 and 30 feet) than they were in left field. The film's directors were careful not to show any high shots of the stadium that would show the compromised field dimensions (especially since Hobbs was a left handed Power hitter with right field being his natural pulling side), while any views of the right field fence and stands were shot from ground level (getting no closer than the pitchers mound), making it seem like it was a regular size Baseball field (they also used slow motion for balls Hobbs hit into the stands to make it seem like he had been hitting long distance home runs). With the baseball diamond located in close to the (northwest) corner of the field, directors were also careful not to show the large amount of ground between the baseball field's outfield fences in left field to the bleacher seats located at the eastern end of the stadium. The northwest corner location of home plate was another quirk with the stadium. Placing home plate there actually put the baseball diamond on the opposite side of the field to the main grandstand and press box. Thus the main stand for football actually became the center field bleachers during baseball games while the press box was where they showed The Judge's office to be.
Variety called it an "impeccably made ... fable about success and failure in America."[14]James Berardinelli praised The Natural as "[a]rguably the best baseball movie ever made".[14]ESPN's Page 2 selected it as the 6th best sports movie of all time.[15] Sports writer Bill Simmons has argued, "Any 'Best Sports Movies' list that doesn't feature either Hoosiers or The Natural as the No. 1 pick shouldn't even count."[16]
Director Barry Levinson said on MLB Network's "Costas at the Movies" in 2013 that while the film is based in fantasy, "through the years, these things which are outlandish actually [happen] ... like Kirk Gibson hitting the home run and limping around the bases ... Curt Schilling with the blood on the sock in the World Series."[17]
Leonard Maltin's 18th annual Movie Guide edition called it "too long and inconsistent." Dan Craft, longtime critic for the Bloomington, Illinois paper, The Pantagraph,[18] wrote, "The storybook ending is so preposterous you don't know whether to cheer or jeer." In Sports Illustrated, Frank Deford had faint praise for it: "The Natural almost manages to be a swell movie."[3]John Simon of National Review and Richard Schickel of Time were disappointed with the adaptation. Simon contrasted Malamud's story about the "failure of American innocence" with Levinson's "fable of success ... [and] the ultimate triumph of semi-doltish purity," declaring "you have, not Malamud's novel, but a sorry illustration of its theme".[19] Schickel lamented that "Malamud's intricate ending (it is a victory that looks like a defeat) is vulgarized (the victory is now an unambiguous triumph, fireworks included)," and that "watching this movie is all too often like reading about The Natural in the College Outlineseries."[20]
Roger Ebert called it "idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford."[21] Ebert's television collaborator Gene Siskel praised it, giving it four stars, also putting down other critics that he suggested might have just recently read the novel for the first time.[22]
In a lengthy article on baseball movies in The New Yorker, Roger Angell pointed out that Malamud had intentionally treated Hobbs' story as a baseball version of the King Arthur legend, which came across in the film as a bit heavy-handed, "portentous and stuffy," and that the book's ending should have been kept. He also cited several excellent visuals and funny bits, and noted that Robert Redford had prepared so carefully for the role, modeling his swing on that of Ted Williams, that "you want to sign him up."[23]
The film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively compiled reviews from 48 critics to give the film a score of 83%, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Though heavy with sentiment, The Natural is an irresistible classic, and a sincere testament to America's national pastime."[14] The film received a Metacritic score of 61 based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[24]
The initial DVD edition, with copyright year on the box reading "2001", contained the theatrical version of the film, along with a few specials and commentaries.
The "director's cut" was released on April 3, 2007.[27] A two-disc edition, it contains the featurette "The Heart of the Natural," a 44-minute documentary featuring comments from Cal Ripken Jr. and Levinson; it is the only extra released originally with the 2001 DVD. Sony added a number of other extras, however, including: "When Lightning Strikes: Creating The Natural," a 50-minute documentary discussing the origins of the original novel and the production of the film; "Knights in Shining Armor," which addresses the mythological parallels between The Natural, King Arthur and the Odyssey; and "A Natural Gunned Down" which tells the story of Eddie Waitkus, a baseball player who was shot by Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a female stalker, in an incident which inspired the fictionalized shooting of Roy Hobbs.[28] The film itself has been re-edited, restoring deleted footage to the early chapters of the story. These scenes expand on the sadness of Hobbs, focusing on his visits to his childhood home as an adult and his childhood memories.[28] The "gift set" version of the release also included some souvenirs: a baseball "signed" by Roy Hobbs; some baseball cards of Hobbs and teammates; and a New York Knights cap.
Soundtrack
The film score of The Natural was composed and conducted by Randy Newman.[29] The score has often been compared to the style of Aaron Copland and sometimes Elmer Bernstein. Scott Montgomery, writing for Goldmine music magazine, referenced the influence, and David Ansen, reviewing the film for Newsweek, called the score "Coplandesque".[30][31] The score also has certain Wagnerian features of orchestration and use of leitmotif. Adnan Tezer of Monsters and Critics noted the theme is often played for film and television previews and in "baseball stadiums when introducing home teams and players".[28]
Levinson also described to Bob Costas in MLB Network's "Costas at the Movies" how he heard Newman develop the movie's iconic theme: "We were racing to try to get this movie out in time and we were in one room and then there was a wall and Randy's in the other room. One of the great thrilling moments is I heard him figuring out that theme...You could hear it through the wall as he was working out that theme and I'll never forget that."[citation needed]
The soundtrack album was released May 11 on the Warner Bros. label, with the logo for Tri-Star Pictures also appearing on the label to commemorate this as their first production.[32]
↑ Fimrite, Ron (May 7, 1984). "A star with real clout". Sports Illustrated. p.92. Archived from the original on April 3, 2019. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
↑ "Towne Adapts and Produces 'Natural'". Variety. October 7, 1981. p.7.
↑ Janna Malamud Smith (daughter of Bernard Malamud) (April 3, 2007). When Lightning Strikes: Creating The Natural (Documentary). Sony Pictures Entertainment.
1 2 Barry Levinson (director) (April 3, 2007). When Lightning Strikes: Creating The Natural (Documentary). Sony Pictures Entertainment.
↑ "Umpire batting one thousand". The Californian. December 20, 1991. p.B-7. Archived from the original on January 19, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2022– via Newspapers.com.
↑ Montgomery, Scott; Gary Norris; Kevin Walsh (September 1, 1995). "The Invisible Randy Newman". Goldmine. Vol.21, no.18. Archived from the original on August 17, 2007. Retrieved January 20, 2008. The Natural, a 1984 Robert Redford vehicle based on the classic Bernard Malamud novel about a baseball player, features some of Newman's most inspiring movie music — his first score to feature synthesizers prominently in string arrangements. Leaning gently on Copland, Berlin and his uncle Al, the dramatic title theme (which has been heard in virtually every baseball-related film trailer since the movie's release) earned Newman both an Academy Award nomination for best soundtrack and a 1985 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental.
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