Director: George Roy Hill
Writer: William Goldman
Photography: Conrad L. Hall
Music: Burt Bacharach
Editors: John C. Howard, Richard C. Meyer
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin, Ted Cassidy, Kenneth Mars, Henry Jones, Jeff Corey, Cloris Leachman, Sam Elliott, George Furth
Here's a Western that is overtly sentimental about the closing of the Western frontier and the end of the 19th century and the Old West. The Spanish-American War stands in as vivid time marker. It's 1898, no later than 1899. As a movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is all dressed up in the garb of late-'60s New Hollywood— chests are bared, people swear, they have sex, they crack wise, etc.—but really the picture sets its eyes squarely on old-school movie gloss confection. It's a buddy movie where the buddies make jokes and bicker all the way until the moment of their deaths and there's always time for one more musical interlude. You say you've got the Swingle Singers out there in the hall? Bring 'em in!
It's fair to say Burt Bacharach is responsible for the worst parts of this movie, and the bicycle-riding "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on Head" montage is the worst of that, the nadir of the whole picture (not to mention possibly entire sections of movie history). Another musical interlude that accompanies sepia-toned photographs of a journey to Bolivia is better but still pure sentiment. The Swingle Singers boppin' around over the good times in Bolivia is nearly pure 1969—dated ("Pepsi," rock critic Nik Cohn would call it). But this is a movie looking to make money and win awards, which it did, and somehow it is now considered among the 500 greatest movies ever made.
Here's a Western that is overtly sentimental about the closing of the Western frontier and the end of the 19th century and the Old West. The Spanish-American War stands in as vivid time marker. It's 1898, no later than 1899. As a movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is all dressed up in the garb of late-'60s New Hollywood— chests are bared, people swear, they have sex, they crack wise, etc.—but really the picture sets its eyes squarely on old-school movie gloss confection. It's a buddy movie where the buddies make jokes and bicker all the way until the moment of their deaths and there's always time for one more musical interlude. You say you've got the Swingle Singers out there in the hall? Bring 'em in!
It's fair to say Burt Bacharach is responsible for the worst parts of this movie, and the bicycle-riding "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on Head" montage is the worst of that, the nadir of the whole picture (not to mention possibly entire sections of movie history). Another musical interlude that accompanies sepia-toned photographs of a journey to Bolivia is better but still pure sentiment. The Swingle Singers boppin' around over the good times in Bolivia is nearly pure 1969—dated ("Pepsi," rock critic Nik Cohn would call it). But this is a movie looking to make money and win awards, which it did, and somehow it is now considered among the 500 greatest movies ever made.
It's easy to sniff at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for any number of reasons but for me it was one of the first movies I ever saw going to movies on my own. Then, somehow, a copy of William Goldman's screenplay wound up in my hands, published at the time as a mass market paperback, and so Butch Cassidy also became one of the first movies I went to more than once, fascinated by how much Goldman had compressed into the dry screenplay format—or attempted to compress, as some of the scenes did not work or translate well in the movie. But more of them did. And it was wonderful to see.
Revisiting it again recently I was struck by how well I know this movie now. As with albums known so well you can hear the beginnings of next songs in the ends of previous, I was amazed how many lines I remember verbatim minutes before they occur. Even what is recognizably insipid (relatively small pieces but on average woven evenly through) now has a glow of past deep appreciation.
I was also still impressed with the long early-middle section where the outlaw duo is being chased. The picture starts by running quickly into the syrup of old-time sepia imagery, buddy antics, and B.J. Thomas, but then straightens right up after the second comical train robbery leads to the chase. The music falls away entirely for this section of 30 or 40 minutes and the joking around simmers way down too. "Who are those guys?" becomes their recurring refrain, which culminates in an insane jump from a rocky cliff into a rocky stream.
The stunt work is quietly impressive all through this movie, especially in the first half—even the unbearable bicycle scene has some nifty riding and some of it looks like it might actually be Paul Newman. Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, in one of his earliest roles, is impressively physical and kinetic. Sundance can't hit a wood chip on the ground from 20 feet if he has to stand still. "Can I move?" he asks, spinning the gun fancy style into the holster and out again, leaping athletically and not only hitting the wood chip but hitting the biggest flying splinter off it with a second shot as well. "I'm better when I move," he says.
Because it's a movie that is sad-faced about the passing of time it casts the "mostly true" story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a tragedy. They're hemmed in in the States and escape to Bolivia, but their outlaw lifestyle finally starts to fail them there too. The key to the tragedy—it's right there in Goldman's screenplay notes—is Etta Place (Katharine Ross), Sundance's girlfriend, who travels to Bolivia with them because she can speak Spanish good. Her one condition is that she won't watch them die, which seems rather melodramatic in the moment, of course, but this is movie entertainment so OK.
Later, in Bolivia, when she announces she thinks she'll go on back home ahead of them, we don't remember her early declaration exactly, only the sense of it, and the movie then makes its turn to tragedy. However strained, it is affecting, with one more blazing good and quietly outlandish gun battle. Unfortunately, the instinct for wisecracking, which you might think would subside to give this part of the story room, instead ramps up, as if nervous about what it intends to do with these outlaws.
Ultimately, that makes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a kind of meta tragedy in a way, as its own fatal flaw of Hollywood glitzing for our viewing pleasure ultimately undercuts the more poignant one about a couple of outlaws whose way of life was ending, not just their own lives. I can no longer judge this movie—I've seen it too many times and it has meant too much to me in the past. If I notice and wince at all its many flaws now, it's only in the context of reciting imminent lines from the coming scene as they rush back into memory. I'm sure you all have a movie like this in your own closets. Come on. Stop hiding behind "guilty pleasure." This is a screenplay so good they could sell it in drugstores.
Revisiting it again recently I was struck by how well I know this movie now. As with albums known so well you can hear the beginnings of next songs in the ends of previous, I was amazed how many lines I remember verbatim minutes before they occur. Even what is recognizably insipid (relatively small pieces but on average woven evenly through) now has a glow of past deep appreciation.
I was also still impressed with the long early-middle section where the outlaw duo is being chased. The picture starts by running quickly into the syrup of old-time sepia imagery, buddy antics, and B.J. Thomas, but then straightens right up after the second comical train robbery leads to the chase. The music falls away entirely for this section of 30 or 40 minutes and the joking around simmers way down too. "Who are those guys?" becomes their recurring refrain, which culminates in an insane jump from a rocky cliff into a rocky stream.
The stunt work is quietly impressive all through this movie, especially in the first half—even the unbearable bicycle scene has some nifty riding and some of it looks like it might actually be Paul Newman. Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, in one of his earliest roles, is impressively physical and kinetic. Sundance can't hit a wood chip on the ground from 20 feet if he has to stand still. "Can I move?" he asks, spinning the gun fancy style into the holster and out again, leaping athletically and not only hitting the wood chip but hitting the biggest flying splinter off it with a second shot as well. "I'm better when I move," he says.
Because it's a movie that is sad-faced about the passing of time it casts the "mostly true" story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a tragedy. They're hemmed in in the States and escape to Bolivia, but their outlaw lifestyle finally starts to fail them there too. The key to the tragedy—it's right there in Goldman's screenplay notes—is Etta Place (Katharine Ross), Sundance's girlfriend, who travels to Bolivia with them because she can speak Spanish good. Her one condition is that she won't watch them die, which seems rather melodramatic in the moment, of course, but this is movie entertainment so OK.
Later, in Bolivia, when she announces she thinks she'll go on back home ahead of them, we don't remember her early declaration exactly, only the sense of it, and the movie then makes its turn to tragedy. However strained, it is affecting, with one more blazing good and quietly outlandish gun battle. Unfortunately, the instinct for wisecracking, which you might think would subside to give this part of the story room, instead ramps up, as if nervous about what it intends to do with these outlaws.
Ultimately, that makes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a kind of meta tragedy in a way, as its own fatal flaw of Hollywood glitzing for our viewing pleasure ultimately undercuts the more poignant one about a couple of outlaws whose way of life was ending, not just their own lives. I can no longer judge this movie—I've seen it too many times and it has meant too much to me in the past. If I notice and wince at all its many flaws now, it's only in the context of reciting imminent lines from the coming scene as they rush back into memory. I'm sure you all have a movie like this in your own closets. Come on. Stop hiding behind "guilty pleasure." This is a screenplay so good they could sell it in drugstores.
Inspired many a lousy late Spaghetti Western: Sundance and the Kid, Ben and Charlie, Jessie and Lester, Sonny and Jed, Trinity and Sartana, etc. -Skip D Expense
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