Film Review
Confounding the critics, who mostly wrote it off as vacuous,
pretentious and immoral,
Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was an instant hit with the
cinema-going public and proved to be one of the most commercially
successful westerns of all time. It took over one hundred million
dollars at the box office and won a brace of awards (including four
Oscars and nine BAFTAs). Today, the film's unique blend of
humour, lyricism and old Wild West romanticism has made it a classic
that is held in high esteem. It is also considered the prototype
of the modern buddy movie and feels emblematic of the counterculture
that would revitalise Hollywood in the late sixties, early seventies.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
is unlike any other western, before or since. Somewhere between
François Truffaut's
Jules et Jim (1962) and Arthur
Penn's
Bonnie and Clyde
(1967), the film is less an account of the exploits of two outlaws and
more an exploration of the male-male buddy relationship. In
contrast to the merciless, hell-raising bandits in Sam Peckinpah's
contemporaneous
The Wild Bunch
(1969), the two main protagonists in this film are sympathetic
anti-heroes that we just can't help liking. In the role that made
him an overnight star, Robert Redford is the prefect complement to
steely-eyed Paul Newman. There is a warmth and poignancy to their
characters' relationship, and it helps that the actors have a rapport that naturally admits
some great deadpan comedy.
The winning duo would be back four years later in another box office hit,
The
Sting (1973), again directed by George Roy Hill.
Like all great films,
Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid provides a vivid reflection of the era in
which it was made. The late 1960s saw a growing disillusionment
with the old institutions, and authority of any kind was both
distrusted and resented. Perhaps the main appeal of the film for
a contemporary audience was that its protagonists are a pair of society
dropouts who just aren't that bothered by material concerns and abiding
by the rules. Hey, we're here to have fun, not to have little
pen-pushing fascists tell us what to do all the time. Those were
the days...
The partners in crime we see in this film aren't so much latterday
Robin Hoods as thorns in the side of the establishment, the kind of
rebels we all secretly admire and would perhaps even like to be.
This anti-authoritarian, pro-individualist subtext, perhaps more than
anything, is what lies behind the film's enduring appeal - that and
some moments of inspired insanity. The best example of the latter
is the totally incongruous sequence in which Paul Newman goes cycling
to the strains of
Raindrops Keep
Falling on My Head in a sequence that somehow manages to
resemble both an impressionist painting and a tacky French porn
movie. Hallucinogenic drugs probably had something to do with the
making of this film.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are two seasoned outlaws who are
beginning to wish they had taken out a pension plan. On their
uppers and not overly optimistic over what the future may hold for
them, they join up with their former associates in the Hole-in-the-Wall
gang to mount a train robbery. When this proves to be a walkover,
they immediately carry out a second train robbery, but the
outcome is far from successful. Not only do they succeed in
blowing up all the banknotes (and most of the train) in an attempt to
break into the strongbox, but a posse emerges from a second train and
very nearly captures them. With things getting too hot for their liking,
Butch and Sundance flee to Bolivia with their girlfriend Etta.
There, they hope to resume their career of carefree bank robbing, but
find that they must first overcome the language barrier. When
they realise that bounty hunters may be trailing them, the two outlaws
decide that perhaps now would be a good time to go straight. It turns
out not to be the best career move...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.