Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ***** (1969, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross) – Classic Movie Review 793

Director George Roy Hill’s 1969’s gem is a stupendous comedy Western that put him together with Paul Newman and Robert Redford and director Hill four years before they made The Sting together. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid won four Oscars and holds the Bafta record of nine wins.

The success starts with William Goldman’s ultra-clever screenplay. Weirdly, though based on real characters and a true story, the plot borrows elements from The Wild Bunch and Jules et Jim, because these are two movies you just wouldn’t put together in a month of Sundays.

But Goldman’s Oscar-winning story and screenplay is incisive and witty, showing the two legendary bank and train robbers heading up The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and keeping just ahead of the special posse formed to catch them until they decide to flee to Bolivia, where they wind up in a shoot-out.

The cool, engaging, charismatic Newman and Redford share infectious great chemistry, playing off each other with the utmost style and humour as Butch and Sundance, in a glorious entertainment that was a much-deserved box-office smash. It cost $6 million and grossed $102 million in the US.

With its outstanding performances and compelling story, it is many people’s favourite Western. However you rate it, it is impossible not to enjoy this exceptionally entertaining and handsome-looking movie, whose glossy visuals are a tribute to Conrad L Hall’s eye-catching, Oscar-winning cinematography.

Co-star Katharine Ross plays the lads’ alluring companion Etta Place and joins them for the sequence with the show-stopping song ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ (sung by  B. J. Thomas), which won Burt Bacharach and Hal David a best song Oscar. Bacharach’s score and the cinematography made it four Oscars. With nine wins it holds the record for the Baftas, winning Best Picture, actor (Redford), actress (Ross), direction, screenplay, cinematography, film editing, sound and score.

There is a memorable support actor cast of the era, headed by Strother Martin, Henry Jones, Jeff Corey, Cloris Leachman, Ted Cassidy, Kenneth Mars, George Furth and Sam Elliott (in his feature film debut).

It was originally called The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy, till Newman’s superior star power prevailed with a title change. Steve McQueen was originally cast as Sundance. The usual name for the gang was The Wild Bunch but its name is changed to The Hole in the Wall Gang to avoid confusion with Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 film The Wild Bunch.

Newman did his own bicycle stunts, after his stunt man was unable to stay on the bike, except for the scene where Butch crashes backwards into the fence, which was performed by cinematographer Hall. Newman and Hall reunited for their last movie, Road to Perdition.

All the Bolivia scenes were filmed in Mexico, where almost the entire cast, crew and the director came down with severe diarrhoea, apart from the three stars, who wisely just drank soda and alcohol. All the ‘Bolivian’ characters have Mexican accents.

The famous river jump was shot at the 20th Century-Fox studio’s Century Ranch near Malibu. At Century Lake, the stars’ stuntmen jumped off of a construction crane, which was obscured by a matte painting of the cliffs. The actors start the jump in Colorado and land on a mattress.

Robert Leroy Parker was nick-named Butch Cassidy because he worked in a butcher’s shop, while Harry Alonzo Longabaugh was named The Sundance Kid because he once was arrested in Sundance, Wyoming. The location of their graves is unknown, sparking a conspiracy theory that their deaths were faked.

Burt Bacharach (May 12, 1928 – February 8, 2023) composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. He was a six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner: 1970 Academy Award for Best Original Song, ;Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’; 1970 Academy Award for Best Original Score, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. and 1981 Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song and Best Original Song ‘Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)’.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 793

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