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BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
1969
DIRECTED BY GEORGE ROY HILL
1:00 PM WARNER GRAND THEATER
(110 minutes.) Director: George Roy
Hill. Screenplay by William Goldman. Cinematographer: Conrad Hall.
Editors: John C. Howard; Richard C. Meyer. Music: Burt Bachrach.
Costumes: Edith Head. Producers: Paul Monash, John Foreman. Starring:
Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katherine Ross, Strother Martin Jeff
Corey, Henry Jones, Cloris Leachman, Ted Cassidy, Kenneth Mars.
This witty, light-hearted ballad is one of the most beloved westerns of
all times. William Goldman wrote the screenplay with Robert Redford
firmly in mind for at least half of the lead duo -- he knew well that
the actor had, in the early 1960s, secured a parcel of Utah mountain
land called “Sundance.” Paul Newman, meantime, fell in love with the
role of Butch. Director George Roy Hill fuses the talents of all these
charmers with a seamless, romantic ease.
The time is roughly the turn of the 20th century. The west is closing,
and everybody knows it -- especially the outlaws. Butch (Newman) and
his partner Sundance (Redford) rob banks and whatever else is
convenient, but have managed to succeed up to a point without killing
anybody. They rely on their wits. Left to themselves, as they are for a
great stretch when the law waltzes them into a trap and they find
themselves being pursued across rugged countryside for several long
hard days, they cut each other up with a barrage of elegant insults.
It’s their way of being affectionate with one another. For the rest of
it, they are both rivals for the heart of the beautiful Etta Place,
played by Katherine Ross. As the end of the west draws close, they
sweet-talk her into joining them on their latest brainstorm, a move to
what they hope will be their next land of opportunity -- the jungles of
Bolivia, in South America.
Conrad Hall’s cinematography is in deep harmony with the merry
intelligence of the script and the jaunty, ironic magnetism of the two
anti-heroes. (The superb costumes are by the maestra of design herself,
Edith Head.) Butch Cassidy of the Sundance Kid
thus manages a feat seldom repeated -- it’s a feel-good movie about
loss and downfall. There’s a price to be paid for living outside the
law, is the implication, but before that final axe falls there is
forever an abundance of life to be lived. This paradox is very loveably
American. Butch, Sundance and the worlds Goldman, Hill and Hall create
around them are loveable, period.
