BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID

REVIEWED BY BRETT WILLIS

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: violence, sensuality, language

Rated:

This first pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who didn’t know each other before working on this film, is one of the finest examples of “buddy” movies. It picked up four Oscars and was nominated for three more.  Four years later Newman, Redford and director George Roy Hill teamed up again and made The Sting, a similarly-themed film set in the Prohibition era, which won a Best Picture Oscar. Although I own a copy of this film and admire many things about the acting, cinematography etc., I want to note at the outset that it’s fundamentally dangerous because its “heroes” are outlaws and their criminal behavior is somewhat glorified (the same goes for The Sting).  For young and impressionable viewers, the imitative behavior aspect must be considered.

The setting is around 1900; there are references to the Spanish-American War and “Remember the Maine.”  The ways of the Old West are fast dying out, but Butch Cassidy (real name Robert Leroy Parker) leads a “throwback” band of bank and train robbers known as the Wild Bunch or the Hole in the Wall Gang.  His best buddy within the gang is the straight-shooting Sundance Kid (real name Harry Longbaugh). Cassidy, the brains behind the robberies, is a likable man, honorable in his own way, and has never personally killed anyone.  Nevertheless he’s on the Most Wanted list, relentlessly pursued by top lawmen, so he and Sundance eventually flee to Bolivia along with Sundance’s girlfriend Etta Place, where they waffle between continuing their lives of crime and “going straight.”

All of the above is pretty much historically accurate, except that Cassidy’s last surviving sister Lula claimed that Butch’s closest companion in the gang was really Elzy Lay and that Elzy, not Sundance, was Butch’s sidekick for several of the events used in the film.  But who’d go to see a movie called “Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay”?  Lula also claimed, and many people corroborated her on this, that Butch did not die in Bolivia but returned to the U.S. and lived under an assumed identity, dying in 1937.  One other minor point: Butch, Sundance and Etta fled first to Argentina before going on to Bolivia.

Overall, writer William Goldman (famous for getting away with using a totally unorthodox screenplay formatting style) inserts many historically accurate moments, including Butch deliberately using just enough dynamite to blow open a railroad baggage car carrying the safe, but not enough to kill the dedicated railroad employee holed up inside the car.  He also creates (and the actors give life to) a unique and memorable chemistry between the lead characters.  Especially in the final sequences, such as where Etta decides to return to the U.S. and where the wounded Butch and Sundance get ready to shoot their way out of a trap, there’s art in the fact that what is not said completely overshadows what is said.  If and when you see this film, you’ll know what I mean.

The Burt Bacharach music (including “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head” by B.J. Thomas), the use of sepiatone and dialogueless sequences, the dusty-foggy cinematography—there are many aspects of this film that are often imitated but seldom equaled.  But the smart-mouth cameraderie and mostly-unspoken understanding between Butch and Sundance is the one thing that makes it a classic. There are many deaths by gunfire, some with bloody results.  Since the central figures are criminals and the lawmen are undeveloped characters, it requires an act of the will not to root for the wrong side.  A man challenges Butch to a knife-fight for leadership of the gang, but Butch wins by tricking and crotch-kicking him. There are about 40 instances of profanity and vulgarity, including d*mn, hell, and sh*t, and curses involving God and Jesus.  There may have been soft-spoken profanities that I didn’t catch, and my Spanish isn’t good enough to tell if there were profanities in the un-subtitled Spanish sequences.

There’s no visible nudity, but there are two scenes of Butch and Sundance at a brothel. In one of them, a woman disrobes to her underwear, preparing to have sex with Butch (played for laughs). In the other brothel sequence, a woman is kissing Butch, and a lonely Sundance remarks that he’s going to go out and find himself a woman too.  This leads directly to a sequence in which Sundance appears to have broken into the home of a woman, surprises her, forces her at gunpoint to disrobe to her underwear, then reaches his hands inside her unfastened top. As it turns out, this scene has a hidden twist and it’s played for laughs too; but it’s still sensual and tense, especially for a first-time viewer. It’s obvious that Etta and Sundance are lovers, and there’s also indication that Etta is close to Butch and may actually be “shared” in some sense by both men (this too is historically accurate).  In a train-robbery sequence, Butch makes fun of the surname—“Woodcock”—of a loyal railroad employee.

Women in Westerns usually tend to get in the way of the action.  Katharine Ross as Etta brings an intelligence to her role.  She’s a schoolteacher who just happened to fall in love with Sundance (some historians accept this, while others believe she was a prostitute).  Her secondary social role, waiting nervously to find out if her men come home alive or dead, creates audience sympathy for her character.  However, she’s fully aware of their chosen line of work, and in South America she actively participates in robberies with them (historically accurate) and also coaches them in the Spanish vocabulary they’ll need for committing holdups.

At one point in the film, Butch reads a newspaper article about all the famous lawmen that the Union Pacific has hired to kill him, and remarks that that’s bad business—if they’d just pay him the money instead, he’d stop robbing them.  It’s obvious that buying off a thief would be an even worse choice, inviting similar behavior and demands from every other criminal; and no such offer is shown in the film.  Amazingly enough, though, in real life the railroad actually did make Butch a money offer: an arranged pardon and a high-salary “guard job” that he’d be paid for whether he showed up for work or not.  But the offer was withdrawn when Butch robbed another train while negotiations were in process.  Don’t let Butch’s “niceness” or the fact that he’s played by Paul Newman obscure the essence of what he really was. The film is worth seeing only if you, and every viewer in your household, can keep that in mind.

For a Western in which Paul Newman’s character is a positive role-model, try Hombre.

* Although there are no uses of the f-word in the film, there’s a 45-minute “Making Of” documentary included on the newest VHS copies (I presume it’s also on DVD copies), and the director uses the word several times in that added feature.

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