The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

Plot: A 1920's barnstorming Pilot dreams of meeting Kessler, the great German Ace, in combat.
Stars: Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon
Best Quotes:  None

Produced by George Hill, (Director of  The sting and Butch Cassidy), I was expecting an upbeat movie, with some great aerial stunts and maybe a nice romance.  And I got that for first 50 minutes.  Then, for some reason, the movie went "dark" and took a wrong turn.

Sarandon (the love interest) goes on a "wing walk".  At first, we laugh as she expresses comical terror, then get concerned, and finally breathe a sigh of relief when Redford  rescues her. Oh, wait - scratch that.  Actually, she falls to her death. Say what?

Then ten minutes later,  Redford's buddy dies a gruesome death. He burns to death, when a yokel smokes near the plane crash. Why kill him off?  I don't know.  But it leads Waldo Pepper to Hollywood where he meets Kessler. Both of them are unhappy, and they decide to dogfight. Why? Its not made clear. The dogfight ends with both Kessler and Pepper still flying. But then - in an American Graffiti like tack-on, we learn Waldo Pepper (and presumably Kessler) have died. Why the downer ending? Who knows.

Summary:  Some great aerial sequences and stunts, can't make up for the downer story and shallow characters.  A disappointment.

Postscript: William Goldman's Version
According to screenwriter Goldman in "Adventures in the Screen Trade"; the film died commercially because of Sarandon's death.  The audience - specifically, the female audience - wouldn't accept Sarandon's death, and tuned out the movie.  Furthermore, both he and the director (George Hill) knew of the negative audience reaction, but refused to re-shoot the scene because it "wouldn't have made a better movie".  

To me, this just proves that the movie-makers were determined to make a "feel-bad story" about American barnstormers. And why do that?  Goldman doesn't say. For some reason, the people involved wanted to make a downbeat movie about a romantic topic - and they succeeded.  What's absurd is that killing off Sarandon accomplishes only one thing-  it gets rid of her character,  But they didn't need to kill her to do that.