Review: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) · 5:34pm Jul 31st, 2015
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a refreshingly unpretentious film that's main goal is to entertain in a uniquely laid back and amiable manner, a task which it does with flying colors.
George Roy Hill's direction is understated, yet effective in conjuring the film's breezy and almost tongue in cheek nature. It isn't a full blown comedy, nor is it a drama, instead lying in that sweet spot right between the two, and Hill's direction is a key element of that, with some nice dolly shots, zooms and wide shots that let the audience appreciate either minor details (such as a facial expression), or the broader terrain that the characters inhabit. He lets his actors (particularly Paul Newman and Robert Redford) have room to breathe, while also keeping the film at a breezy pace that fits the screenplay, a wonderfully wry ball of wit and charm by William Goldman, who deservedly took home the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. There's so much wit and banter here, and it really sets the standard on which to judge buddy films.
Of course, a lot of this fun and wit comes from how Paul Newman and Robert Redford deliver their dialogue. Suffice to say that they're chemistry is amazing, some of the best I've seen in fact. From Newman's constant snarky asides and witty observations, to Redford's perpetual sense of comic apathy or exasperation at Newman's antics, it really helps the audience buy that Butch and Sundance have been friends for so long. They really compliment each other, and are obviously having great fun in the roles.
The rest of the cast are also great, and flow along with Redford and Newman's infectious fun. Everybody's obviously having lots of fun in their roles and really enjoying themselves, and in turn makes the film very enjoyable.
Conrad Hall's cinematography (which won him an Oscar), is, like the rest of the film, unpretentious, yet effective. Switching between rich sepia and then slightly washed out full color, the transitions work, and overall give the film a rustic feel. The editing is also great, helping make the end sequence one of the best gunfights I've seen. Burt Bacharach's score, while surprisingly sparse, is catchy and fun, with his undeniable ear for melody coming to the fore. Of course, "Raindrops Are Falling on My Head" is now so iconic it's seeped into the cultural lexicon like few songs have.
I will note that, underneath this bubbly film, is an undercurrent of melancholy. Not a major one, as it doesn't effect the tone of the film, but the undercurrent of the Old West fading and being steadily replaced by the 20th Century is noticeable, and a central theme of the film. Much of Butch and Sundance's problems stem from their inability to see this change, or their flat out denial of it, with Butch always suggesting they head off to some other location whenever things go wrong, as if running from the changing times would stop it from affecting them. This is their prime reason for moving to Bolivia, a decision that ends with them surrounded by the Bolivian army and charging out, before the film freeze frames on the two with their guns ablaze, as the sound of gunfire resounds. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, almost as if the film doesn't want to see them die, but can't deny that their time is over. But they live on in legend, and the last image of them leaves the audience with the feeling that they died as they lived: Roguishly and on their own terms.
So yeah, overall, I really enjoyed the film. Sure, it's not some deep meta statement on the West, or anything like that, but the fact that it is unabashedly meant to provide pure, fun entertainment is something I love about it.
5 out of 5.
My undergraduate thesis was about the evolution of Western's, and 1969 was a kind of watershed moment in that regard. I contended that there were three Westerns that year that really marked the death of the traditional Western as the dominant type in the genre (and it had been going on for some time, mind you, what with the advent of the Spaghetti Western, but 1969 was the final nail in the coffin IMO): True Grit (which while traditional in its execution has a very modern premise), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (heavily romanticized, yes, and a whole lot of fun, but also notable for being one of the first major outlaw Westerns), and, of course, The Wild Bunch, which is just the most revisionist of revisionist Westerns out there and takes bombastic pleasure in stomping on every single trope of the traditional Western and grinding it into dust. It's also an incredibly great film, but understanding the Western genre makes it all the more enjoyable. And yes, if it isn't apparent already, I adore Westerns.
3284712 Yeah but, like, who doesn't enjoy a good Western?
And I've yet to see the original True Grit or The Wild Bunch. Various factors have prevented me from watching them; mainly neither currently on Instant Watch to my knowledge, which trust me, makes this so much easier. But they're both very much on my Bucket List.
And even then, you can consider Sergio Leone's Spagetti Westerns as beating those three films to the punch. I mean, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly all subvert, deconstruct and play with Western Tropes.
Heck, even as far back as The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the Western genre has been deconstructed and subverted.
The best part about the Western is that it can be both reconstructed AND subverted, without loosing quintessential elements of it's style. Silverado is a reconstruction, while 3:10 to Yuma (2007 one) is a quasi-deconstruction.
It can be modernized (No Country for Old Men), it can be set in different countries (Yojimbo) or even different planets (Star Wars has elements of it, as does Cowboy Bebop). It's arguably the 'Teflon Genre': Whatever you do to change it, it can still remain a Western.
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The Spaghetti Westerns got it to that point, but they still followed a couple of traditional tropes (the biggest being that there was usually a protagonist who came out on top in the end). I also wrote about them in a historical sense, which meant that I was looking on what immediate impact they had on the genre when they came out; while they were wildly popular, critics really hated them, hence the very name of the genre. Add "Once Upon a Time in the West," to your list of Leone's movies you need to watch; it was his last great Spaghetti Western, but it was the only one of his great ones made in America. It's even more modernist than the Dollars Trilogy and did some strange things like have the villain get top-billing. But still, even it is tamer than the Wild Bunch. Like I said, in my thesis I wrote that the Spaghetti Westerns were pretty much the modernizing process, but they were also kind of this isolated phenomena when they first released. 1969 is when American filmmakers officially embraced the transformations to the genre ushered in by Leone and took them even further than ever before, especially in The Wild Bunch. The first 10 minutes of that movie is one of the most brutal sequences you'll ever watch, think Sam Peckinpah doing the Dark Knight opening heist but taking the brutality factor up 10 notches.
Raindrops are falling on my head...
3284816 Man, now I gotta see it....
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Yes, yes you do. Though my all time favorite Western remains Eastwood's last one, Unforgiven. I just think that's the perfect culmination of traditional and revisionist Western tropes, simply spectacular film.