A review of “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid”
I’ve recently viewed again (fourth time) this classic from 1969.
This immensely popular film is a chase movie, a buddy movie, an action-comedy movie, all in the guise of a western. It declares at the beginning: “Most of what follows is true”. Sure there was a Butch and a Kid, played respectively by Paul Newman and Robert Redford at the height of their cinematic allure, but this is a very sanitised view of the Hole in the Wall Gang and the decline of the wild west. For a much more hard-hitting western set in the same period and similarly concluding south of the border, see “The Wild Bunch” which was released the same year.
This film won four Academy Awards. The first went to William Goldman for his sharp sceeenplay with memorable lines like “What do you mean you can’t swim? The fall’ll probably kill ya!” and “Who ARE those guys?” (uttered three times). The second was taken by Conrad Hall for his distinctive cinematography characterised by lots of scenes in sepia. And the other two Oscars were won by Burt Bacharach for his music and the song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”.
Both “Butch Cassidy” and “The Wild Bunch” conclude with a huge Latin American shoot-out, but it is the former that deploys a freeze shot that spares the viewer and immortalises the stars.
If you like classic movies, you can check out my reviews of 60 of them here.