There is hardly a scene in the film that isn't played for laughs, yet all of it is done so straight-faced it makes it all the funnier.
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I was lucky enough to have first seen "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" at a special preview showing in San Francisco in 1969. Thinking it was going to be just another Western action movie, maybe like Newman's "Hombre" from a couple of years before, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a comedy. Yes, that's how I still think of "Butch," as a comedy. The story may be based on real-life and it may involve drama, romance, and tragedy, but, nonetheless, it basically remains a humorous character study of the two, now-famous outlaws and their friend, Etta Place.
The movie won four Academy Awards at the time for Best Original Screenplay (William Goldman), Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall), Best Original Score (Burt Bacharach), and Best Song, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (Burt Bacharach and Hal David). This DVD is, I believe, its first widescreen release on video, and most welcome it is.
Like "The Wild Bunch," made the same year, "Butch" is a swan song for the passing of the Old West, a tale of over-the-hill outlaws living by a worn-out code of honor in an increasingly dishonorable world. In director George Roy Hill's vision, however, the raw vitality of the Peckinpah film is replaced by a gentle amiability. The story begins at the end of the nineteenth century and continues well into the first decade of the twentieth century. It doesn't take long for the viewer to catch the irony of a government's hanging its desperadoes for robbing trains while rewarding its military for taking lives.
The movie is divided into two halves, connected by a musical-pictorial interlude. In part one, Butch and Sundance (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) are seen casing banks, robbing trains, and generally having a high old time with their Hole-in-the-Wall gang, as well as enjoying the company of Sundance's girlfriend, Etta (Katharine Ross). Then the president of the railroad sends the Pinkertons after them, and the three hightail it to South America where they continue their criminal ways. Newman is the very embodiment of affability. When he faces down a band of gunmen in Bolivia, it is almost superfluous of him to tell the Kid he's never shot anyone before, even if historically this is true. We can tell from Butch's behavior and demeanor that there isn't a malicious bone in his body. As the laconic Sundance Kid, Redford is the more cool, calculated, and remote of the pair, but we can readily see that he, too, is not mean, just quick on the draw. Together, Newman and Redford practically invented the buddy movie.
Interestingly, the role of Sundance was initially to have gone either to Steve McQueen or Warren Beatty, both of them back then much more established stars than Redford. But they turned it down, and serendipity resulted. Ms. Ross as Etta is younger and more beautiful than the picture of the real Etta Place would indicate, but she is no wilting violet of a girlfriend standing in the shadows. Ross develops a strong, resourceful, able-bodied character, a romantic equal to the two leads. Veteran actors Strother Martin, Jeff Corey, and Henry Jones play supporting roles, as do some youngsters, Cloris Leachman, Sam Elliott, Kenneth Mars, and Christopher Lloyd.
There is hardly a scene in the film that isn't played for laughs, yet all of it is done so straight-faced it makes it all the funnier. By the time Butch and Sundance have asked the famous question, "Who are those guys?" about four times, we know the phrase is going to go down as a cultural icon. Probably the greatest influence on the film's success, though, is its director, George Roy Hill. It was he who made sure that the comedy wasn't overdone, that the sweeping, panoramic vistas were a constant reminder that this was a film in the "Western" tradition, and that the dust and sweat of the trail maintained the story's realism. It was also he who OK'd the three different musical selections that momentarily and delightfully interrupt the action--once with "Raindrops," once again while the threesome are in New York City heading for South America, and, finally, while they are being pursued on horseback by Bolivian police. A consummate job of direction, it provides us today with a film classic of its kind.
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