Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

There are essentially three parts to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1969. The first part of the film follows the adventures of Butch and Sundance and the Hole in the Wall Gang in the U.S. West, particularly the rather haphazard ways in which they robbed banks and trains. The middle part of the film, a rather long sequence, follows Butch and Sundance as they try to escape a six-man posse that has been sent to kill them. The final portion deals with the adventures the two men have after they and Sundance's girlfriend flee to Bolivia. This is a rather unconventional Western--at times, it's really almost a comedy--and one of the early films of the so-called New Hollywood that would come to dominate in the 1970s. It's a real treat to watch, primarily because of its two main stars and their chemistry together.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford paired for the first time in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and they were so successful that the director of the film, George Roy Hill, joined them again in 1973 for The Sting, a movie I've already described as just about as perfect as a film could be. Their earlier collaboration comes pretty close to perfection, aided by the Oscar-winning screenplay by William Goldman. Goldman wrote some great interaction between the two men, and each is given ample opportunity to demonstrate his acting talent. What most people remember about this film, I would imagine, is the quick-witted banter between Newman's Butch and Redford's Sundance that Goldman created.

Butch is the talker, the idea man of the gang. He's the one who always comes up with the plans for which banks or trains to rob. It's a different member of the gang, though, who suggests robbing the Union Pacific train both coming and going. Harvey Logan (Ted Cassidy, who also played Bigfoot on episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man) thinks that the railroad company will load the train for the return trip, thinking the gang won't suspect money to be available both times. As is typical of their somewhat inept skills, the gang members (under Butch's direction) use enough dynamite to blow up the entire train, not just the safe, on the second journey, but before they can pick up all the cash, they are quickly attacked by a posse that jumps out of a small train that pulls up behind the one they've just robbed. It doesn't take long before Butch and Sundance realize that the posse is only looking for the two of them.

The middle portion of the film follows the two outlaws as the traverse the western frontier, tracked all the way by the six men. As Butch keeps asking, "Who are those guys?" It turns out the posse has been hired by the head of the railroad, who is understandably upset that his train keeps getting robbed and/or blown up. Butch and Sundance wind up on a cliff over a river and have to make a decision. In one of the more famous sequences of the movie, Sundance admits that he can't swim, to which Butch jokingly replies, "The fall'll probably kill you." They survive the jump, though, and make their way (with Etta Place, played by Katharine Ross, by their side) to Bolivia after a side journey to New York to enjoy a little big-city life.

In Bolivia, they try to rob banks, but their Spanish is too weak. They try to learn from Etta, but Butch, in particular, keeps messing up, even with notes. Eventually, though, they master the art of bank robbing in a foreign country and start to enjoy themselves. After Butch spots one of the members of the posse from the United States, though, he and Sundance attempt to go "straight" (no pun intended) and find legitimate jobs as payroll guards. It seems the payroll for the mining company where they are hired keeps getting stolen by thieves. Ironic, isn't it?

I won't make anything of the fact that this is a movie where the key relationship is between two adult men. One of them already has a steady relationship, Sundance's romance with Etta, but she is apparently just as willing to be Butch's lover. They have a long bike ride to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," and she wonders aloud what would have happened had she met Butch before she met Sundance. Butch only seems able to have fun with prostitutes, but when he is left alone while Sundance and Etta share a bed or a dance, you might reasonably wonder who it is that he wishes were free to be with him. All buddy movies have, it seems to me, an implicit sense of the homoerotic or, at the very least, the homosocial (to use Eve Sedgwick's term). I won't even mention the fact that they share one horse for a large portion of that middle trek to avoid the posse.

What's ultimately most intriguing about this movie is that we begin cheering two outlaws. Butch and Sundance are obviously not on the side of law and order; they are self-professed criminals. They talk about getting out of the business, but it's really too easy for them to succeed. Instead, we get a continuing series of ideas from Butch and then the actions by Sundance, particularly his prowess with a gun, to back up those ideas. Newman and Redford were not the first anti-heroes to become the focus of a movie, but this movie helped to cement that kind of character in the public consciousness forever. And having two stars with this much chemistry together was certainly one of the major starting points for the buddy pictures that were to follow for decades afterward.

I'd also like to address the moments in the film when the makers have chosen to use sepia tone rather than natural colors. The film is, of course, based upon actual people, but both Butch and Sundance have more legend than historical fact associated with their exploits. The sepia tone seems to indicate that sense of the past, the way that events were seen then, the way that our memories are often "colored" by time or forgetfulness. Those moments are perhaps the stories that have been passed down, such as the opening sequence where Sundance shoots the gun belt off another man without injuring him. And the final freeze-frame, also in sepia tone, is one of the more remarkable endings in film history. I'll leave it to you to determine what you think happens at the end; it's been the subject of debate since this film was released in 1969 (although why it's been debated is beyond me).

Oscar Wins: Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score (for a Non-Musical), and Original Song ("Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head")

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, and Sound