| Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster byTom Beauvais | |
| Directed by | George Roy Hill |
| Written by | William Goldman |
| Produced by | John Foreman |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Conrad Hall |
| Edited by | |
| Music by | Burt Bacharach |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | 20th Century-Fox |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 110 minutes[2] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $6 million[3] |
| Box office | $102.3 million(North America)[4] |
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 AmericanWesternbuddy film directed byGeorge Roy Hill and written byWilliam Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known asButch Cassidy (Paul Newman), and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid" (Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack USposse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover,Etta Place (Katharine Ross), flee toBolivia to escape the posse.
The film was released on September 24, 1969[1] and while initial reviews from critics were lukewarm, it has since seen a positive retrospective reappraisal. In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[5][6] The American Film Institute rankedButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as the 73rd-greatest American film on its "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)" list, and number 50 on the original list.Butch Cassidy and theSundance Kid were ranked 20th-greatest heroes on "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains".Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was selected by theAmerican Film Institute as the 7th-greatest Western of all time in theAFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008.
In 1899Wyoming,Butch Cassidy is the affable, clever, talkative leader of the outlawHole-in-the-Wall Gang. His closest companion is the laconicdead-shot "Sundance Kid". The two return to their hideout atHole-in-the-Wall to discover that the rest of the gang, irritated by Cassidy's long absences, have selectedHarvey Logan as their new leader.
Logan challenges Cassidy to aknife fight over the gang's leadership. Cassidy defeats him using trickery, but embraces Logan's idea to rob aUnion Pacifictrain on both its eastward and westward runs, agreeing that the second robbery would be unexpected and thus reap more money than the first.
The first robbery goes well. To celebrate, Cassidy visits a favoritebrothel in a nearby town, where the town marshal unsuccessfully attempts to organize aposse to track down the gang, only to have his address to the townsfolk hijacked by a friendly bicycle salesman. Sundance, meanwhile, visits his lover, schoolteacherEtta Place. Cassidy joins up with them the next morning, and takes Place for a ride on his new bike.
On the second train robbery, Cassidy uses too muchdynamite to blow open the newly reinforcedsafe. The explosion demolishes the baggage car in the process and the money flies everywhere. As the gang scrambles to gather it, a second train arrives carrying a six-man team of lawmen. The crack squad pursues Cassidy and Sundance, who try to hide out in the brothel, and then to seekamnesty from Sheriff Bledsoe, to no avail.
The posse remains in pursuit, and it includes renowned Indiantracker "Lord Baltimore" and lawmanJoe Lefors, recognizable by his whiteskimmer. Cassidy and Sundance elude their pursuers by jumping from a cliff into a river far below. They learn from Place that the posse has been paid by Union Pacific headE. H. Harriman to remain on their trail until they are both killed.
Cassidy convinces Sundance and Place that the three should go toBolivia, which he envisions as a robber's paradise. On their arrival there, Sundance is dismayed by the living conditions and regards the country with contempt, but Cassidy remains optimistic. However, they know too littleSpanish to pull off a bank robbery, so Place attempts to teach them the language. With her as an accomplice, they become successful bank robbers known asLos Bandidos Yanquis. However, their confidence drops after seeing a man wearing a white skimmer and fear that Harriman's posse is still after them.
Cassidy suggests "going straight," and he and Sundance land their first honest job aspayroll guards for a mining company. They are ambushed, though, by localbandits on their first run, and their boss, Percy Garris, is killed. They kill the bandits, the first time Cassidy has ever shot someone. The duo concludes the straight life is not for them. Sensing they will be killed should they return to robbery, Place decides to return to the United States.
Cassidy and Sundance steal a payroll and theburro used to carry it, and arrive in a small town. A boy recognizes the burro'sbrand and alerts the police, leading to a gunfight with the outlaws. Cassidy makes a desperate run to the burro to get ammunition, while Sundance provides covering fire. Wounded, the two take cover inside a building. Cassidy suggests their next destination should be Australia. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the two men, the local police have called on theBolivian Army. The pair charges out of the building, guns blazing, into a hail of bullets from the massed troops, who have occupied all the surrounding vantage points. The film ends with the sound of gunfire on afreeze-frame shot of the two running bandits.
William Goldman first came across the story ofButch Cassidy in the late 1950s and researched intermittently for eight years before starting to write the screenplay.[7] Goldman says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it as authentic as a novel.[8] Goldman later stated:
The whole reason I wrote the ... thing, there is that famous line thatScott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, "There are no second acts in American lives." When I read about Cassidy and Longabaugh and the superposse coming after them—that's phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary in South America than they had been in the old West ... It's a great story. Those two guys and that pretty girl going down to South America and all that stuff. It just seems to me it's a wonderful piece of material.[8]
The characters' flight to South America caused one executive to reject the script, as it was then unusual in Western films for the protagonists to flee.[9]
According to Goldman, when he first wrote the script and sent it out for consideration, only one studio wanted to buy it—and that was with the proviso that the two lead characters did not flee to South America. When Goldman protested that that was what had happened, the studio head responded, "I don't give a shit. All I know isJohn Wayne don't run away."[10]
Goldman rewrote the script, "didn't change it more than a few pages, and subsequently found that every studio wanted it."[10]
The role of Sundance was offered toJack Lemmon, whose production company, JML, had produced the filmCool Hand Luke (1967) starring Newman. Lemmon, however, turned down the role because he did not like riding horses and felt that he had already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid's character before.[11] Other actors considered for the role of Sundance wereSteve McQueen andWarren Beatty, who both turned it down, with Beatty claiming that the film was too similar toBonnie and Clyde. According to Goldman, McQueen and Newman both read the scripts at the same time and agreed to do the film. McQueen eventually backed out of the film due to disagreements with Newman. The two actors would eventually team up in the 1974 disaster filmThe Towering Inferno. Redford took the role as he liked the script.[12][13]Jacqueline Bisset was a top contender for the role of Etta Place.[14]
Filming locations include the ghost town ofGrafton,Zion National Park,Snow Canyon State Park, and the city ofSt. George. These areas remain popular film tourism destinations, including the Cassidy Trail in Red Canyon.[15]
Burt Bacharach andHal David wrote the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" for the film. Some felt the song had the wrong tone for a Western, but George Roy Hill insisted on its inclusion.[16] Robert Redford, one of the stars of the film, was among those who disapproved of using the song, though he later acknowledged he was wrong:[16]
When the film was released, I was highly critical: How did the song fit with the film? There was no rain. At the time, it seemed like a dumb idea. How wrong I was, as it turned out to be a giant hit.[16]
The world premiere of the film was on September 23, 1969, at the Roger Sherman Theater, inNew Haven, Connecticut. The premiere was attended by Paul Newman, his wifeJoanne Woodward, Robert Redford, George Roy Hill, William Goldman, andJohn Foreman, among others.[18] It opened the next day in New York City[1] at the Penthouse and Sutton theatres.[19]
The film became available onDVD on May 16, 2000, in a special edition that is also available onVHS.[citation needed]
The film grossed $82,625 in its opening week from two theatres in New York City.[19] The following week, it expanded and became the number-one film in the United States and Canada for two weeks.[20][21] It went on to earn $15 million intheatrical rentals in the United States and Canada by the end of 1969.[22] According to Fox records, the film required $13,850,000 in rentals to break even, and by December 11, 1970, had made $36,825,000, so made a considerable profit to the studio.[23] It eventually returned $45,953,000 in rentals.[24]
With a final US gross over $100 million, it was thetop-grossing film released in 1969.[25]
It was the eighth-most-popular film of 1970 in France.[26]
After release, reviewers gave the film mediocre grades, and New York and national reviews were "mixed to terrible", although better elsewhere, screenwriter William Goldman recalled in his bookWhich Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade.[27]
New York Times film reviewerVincent Canby wrote that the film is "very funny in a strictly contemporary way", but said that "at the heart of the film there is a gnawing emptiness that can't be satisfied by an awareness that Hill and Goldman knew exactly what they were doing---making a very slick movie". He described the "Raindrops" sequence as part of an effort to "play tricks on the audience" by "taking short cuts to lyricism". The performers, Canby wrote, "succeed, although the movie does not".[28]
ATime reviewer said the film's two male stars are "afflicted with cinematic schizophrenia. One moment they are sinewy, battered remnants of a discarded tradition. The next, they are low comedians whose chaffing relationship—and dialogue—could have been lifted from aBatman and Robin episode."Time criticized the "Raindrops" sequence and the "scat-singing sound track by Burt Bacharach at his most cacophonous", which it said made the film "absurd and anachronistic".[29]
Roger Ebert scored the film at two and a half out of four. He praised its beginning and the three lead actors, but felt it progressed too slowly and had an unsatisfactory ending. After Harriman hires his posse, though, Ebert thought the quality declined: "Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood, he couldn't bear to edit them out of the final version. So, the Super-posse chases our heroes unceasingly, until we've long since forgotten how well the movie started."[30] Ebert reaffirmed his review in 1989 stating that he still thought it was a "turkey" and was baffled by its success.[31]
Gene Siskel was also not a big fan of the film, stating he thought it was predictable and that it was "too cute to be believed … not memorable".[32] Siskel later admitted in 1989 that publishing his negative review was one of his first challenges as film critic, recalling that the editorial assistant was shocked that he was giving a bad review to a film starring Paul Newman and would give him a lesson that he had to be honest as a critic, no matter how unpopular his opinion.[31]
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also appears on several of theAmerican Film Institute's100 Years lists.
American movie reviewers have been widely favorable. The film holds an 89% rating onRotten Tomatoes based on 61 reviews with an average score of 8.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "With its iconic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, jaunty screenplay, and Burt Bacharach score,Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has gone down as among the defining moments in late-'60s American cinema".[46]
TheWriters Guild of America ranked thescreenplay 11th on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.[47]
The February 2020 issue ofNew York Magazine listsButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as among "the Best Movies that Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".[48]
In 2003,Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was selected byThe New York Times as one of The 1000 Best Movies Ever Made.[49] In the same year, it was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[5][6] In 2008, British film publicationEmpire ranked the film at number 32 on their list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[50]
The film inspired the television seriesAlias Smith and Jones, starringPete Duel andBen Murphy as outlaws trying to earn an amnesty.[51]
A parody titled "Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid" was published inMad. It was illustrated byMort Drucker and written byArnie Kogen in issue No. 136, July 1970.[52]
Also in 1976, amade-for-television sequel to the film was released.Wanted: The Sundance Woman more heavily features Katharine Ross as Etta Place.[53]
In 1979,Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, a prequel, was released starringTom Berenger as Butch Cassidy andWilliam Katt as the Sundance Kid. It was directed byRichard Lester and written byAllan Burns.William Goldman, the writer of the original film, was an executive producer.Jeff Corey was the only actor to appear in the original and the prequel.[citation needed]
In September 2022,Amazon Studios announced a television adaptation, starringRegé-Jean Page andGlen Powell.Joe and Anthony Russo were to be executive producers under theirAGBO production banner.[54][55]
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