Top 50 Heroes – No. 20 (Butch & Sundance)
Top 100 American Films – No. 50
Top 100 Thrillers – No. 54
Top 100 Movie Songs – No. 23 ("Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head")
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Legends.How do you ensure somebody's legacy as a hero? In the good old days, you used to write a book. Nowadays, you make a movie – and if you're lucky and it's really, really successful, you can retrospectively even make legends out of dangerous criminals. Not that that always works, of course. But with two great actors with instant chemistry (Paul Newman and Robert Redford), a script (by William Goldman) bursting with one-liners that make the audience bowl over laughing every other minute, without once derailing into slapstick, a director's (George Roy Hill's) ingenious use of the occasion to turn a whole genre on its head, and some of the world's most beautiful locations, filmed by an exceptional cinematographer (Conrad Hall) ... you just may be able to pull it off. Case in point: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
While Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) was known as the Old West's Robin Hood for his charm, masterly planning, avoidance of bloodshed – he really did claim he'd never shot anyone – and his stance for settlers' rights vis-à-vis the wealthy cattle barons, Sundance (Henry Longbaugh) had the reputation of a loner; a fast draw repeatedly in and out of prison before even turning twenty-one. After several of their Wild Bunch/Hole in the Wall Gang associates had seen the short end of the stick in various encounters with the law, Butch and Sundance determined things were getting too hot in the West and, unlike the outlaws who not much earlier had stood it out until the end (Billy the Kid, the James Gang and the O.K. Corral gunfighters), decided to head for South America. With a woman named Etta Place, possibly a teacher as portrayed here or, perhaps more likely, a prostitute, they first spent several years farming in Argentina – both had done cattle work before turning to robbery, although in the form of rustling (stealing unbranded cattle) – but eventually reverted to their more profitable, preferred occupation. Most sources believe they died in a 1909 shootout with the Bolivian military in a town named San Vicente; others, however, claim either or both escaped alive, returned to the States under assumed names and died there (Sundance in Casper, WY in 1957 and Cassidy, according to his sister, in Spokane, WA, in 1937).
While their decision to leave the West instead of duking it out with the law and the mystery surrounding their deaths would already have made for a great movie, director Hill cleverly used the material for a 180-degree-turn on the Western genre. The opening credits roll next to sepia-tinged silent shots depicting a Hole in the Wall Gang train robbery, followed by the bold claim that "most of what follows is true" – which in itself, however, couldn't be further from the truth. What does follow is a wild ride from the Outlaw Trail to Bolivia ... during which our heroes aren't getting rid of their pursuers, no Western music with guitars and harmonicas accompanies them but Burt Bacharach's multiple-award-winning, deliberately anachronistic, upbeat score (plus "Raindrops Are Falling on My Head" during the most romantic scene – raindrops???), a knife fight is settled by a kick in the groin, and a marshal trying to assemble a posse first meets with a lackluster population, neither willing to bring their own horses and guns nor clamoring to be supplied with such by him, and in short order sees his meeting usurped by a bicycle salesman. Add to that Oscar-winning cinematography, repeatedly using black-and-white lighting techniques even after the film's switch to color (e.g. in Sundance's first visit with Etta), reverse lighting to make daytime shots look like nighttime (during several scenes of the pursuit) and sepia-tinted shots for period feeling (besides the opening, to sum up the trio's stay in New York), a Bolivian bank robbery with a crib sheet containing "specialized vocabulary" that Butch, contrary to initial claims, doesn't know in Spanish, and an immortalizing freeze-frame ending – and you have one heck of an entertaining movie, shot in some of the West's most spectacular settings and in Mexico (as Bolivia's stand-in).
"Butch and Sundance" turned Robert Redford into a megastar – Hill lobbied hard for the then-perceived "playboy"'s casting, and his instincts proved so dead-on that Paul Newman's entourage became worried the movie's expected primary star would be sidelined (a feeling never shared by Newman himself, though, who's been friends with Redford ever since). In a twist worthy of Goldman's Oscar-winning screenplay, fearsome loner Sundance became one of Redford's most popular roles, and his independent film festival's namesake. The movie renewed popular interest in the Outlaw Trail, which Redford himself traveled later, too (chronicled in a fascinating, alas out-of-print book). Its script is littered with memorable one-liners; from both heroes' "Who are those guys??" to Butch's "I've got vision; the rest of the world is wearing bifocals," his comments on the small price to pay for a bank's beauty (being robbed), on Sundance's gun-prowess ("like I've been telling you – over the hill") and on Bolivia ("When I say Bolivia, you just think California" and "Next time I say let's go some place like Bolivia, let's go some place like Bolivia"), his reaction to the way Sundance asks Etta (Katharine Ross) to come with them – not without pointing out that if she'll ever "whine or make a nuisance," he'll be "dumping her flat" – ("Don't sugarcoat it like that, Kid ... tell her straight!") and his downplaying the final shootout because their archenemy LaForce isn't there; to Sundance's "You just keep thinking, Butch, that's what you're good at," his comments on the secret of his gambling success (prayer), on not being picky about women (followed by a litany of required attributes), on the excessive use of dynamite, and on his one weakness ("I can't swim!!"); and finally Strother Martin/mine-owner Percy Garris's deadpan delivery of the Shanghai Rooster song, of "Morons ... I've got morons on my team" and his assertion not to be crazy but merely "colorful" after having lived alone in Bolivia for ten years. The famous freeze-frame ending has repeatedly been cited, both cinematographically (e.g. in "Thelma and Louise") and in dialogue (e.g. 1998's "Negotiator"). And although initially almost uniformly panned by critics, the movie won quadruple Oscars and multiple other awards. In true Hollywood fashion, it made two feared outlaws legends forever ... and in the process, also won legendary status itself.
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Themis-Athena's select annotated Robert Redford filmography and guide to nature and the West
Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Institute
Themis-Athena's select Paul Newman filmography
The websites of Newman's Own, Newman's Own Organics and Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall camp
Themis-Athena's select annotated Western filmography
Themis-Athena's guide to the American Southwest
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