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Let me start out by saying that I have a special relationship with this film. Actually, my MOTHER has a special relationship with this film -- it was her favorite movie for years, largely because it was the one that put Robert Redford firmly in place as her chosen cinematic sex idol. She consequently dragged me, my brother and sister to see it countless times.


This included an early '70s drive-in double feature with the car chase picture VANISHING POINT, which despite being rated PG featured a LOT of nudity. I distinctly remember us kids sitting in the back seat in amazement as a totally naked blonde woman rode up onscreen on a motorcycle, the first vision of live-action nudity in our young lives, and my mother growling "All right, get down behind the seat and don't look up until I tell you too."


That cathartic experience aside, BUTCH CASSIDY proved well worth returning to, time and time again. While countless westerns and numerous "comedy westerns" had been made to this point, BUTCH CASSIDY was something new and different -- a serious western with a lot of comic moments. It hinged on character and like other westerns of its time, like THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE and THE WILD BUNCH, it examined the role of the traditional western hero (or outlaw) at the turn of the century, when the Old West was beginning to be overtaken by technology and a new society.


Paul Newman and Robert Redford played Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, real historical outlaws who led a group of bank and train robbers named the Hole in the Wall Gang. Cassidy was an affable fellow who managed to lead this cutthroat band without ever dirtying his hands with any real violence. His best friend was the Sundance Kid, a ruthless, hot-tempered gunslinger.


Cassidy's easygoing nature was the perfect balance to the Kid's hotheadedness, just as Paul Newman's outgoing performance perfectly complements Redford's taciturn, cool turn as the Kid. Between them is the beautiful Katherine Ross as Etta Place, a schoolteacher who's dating the Kid but who seems to spend an equal amount of time dallying with Butch.


Like any great movie, BUTCH CASSIDY is a collection of unforgettable sequences that proceed in a fashion that always seems fresh -- you never really get the running order of these scenes memorized. There's the sepia-toned opening (which drove many audiences crazy because they feared, in 1969, that the whole movie would be in black-and-white) in which Butch gloomily cases a high-security bank. (Butch: "What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful." Guard: "People kept robbing it." Butch: "That's a small price to play for beauty.")


There's Butch's great confrontation with Hole in the Wall gang member Harvey Logan (the late, great, booming-voiced giant of an actor, Ted Cassidy), which Butch both starts and ends with a stunning kick in the groin. There's the first train robbery, fouled up by an overzealous railway attendant (George Furth) and a loudmouthed matron (Jody Gilbert). And the second, which is interrupted (after a hilarious over-use of dynamite by Cassidy) by the SuperPosse, a group of highly-trained and faceless lawmen who chase Butch and the Kid nearly to death, with the two outlaws bickering all the way until a spectacular jump off a river cliff into rapids.


And that's just the first half of the film, before the pair (and Etta) hightail it to Bolivia where they make an abbreviated attempt to go straight (under the tutelage of the great character actor Strother Martin) and otherwise face life as fish out of water in a country where no one speaks English.


BUTCH CASSIDY alienated some critics with its contemporary feel, abundance of humor and frankly pop-oriented score by Burt Bacharach, but it quickly won over Hollywood and the country, making almost a hundred million dollars domestically and winning four Oscars (for the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," Burt Bacharach's original score, Conrad Hall's gorgeous cinematography and William Goldman's screenplay), nine British Academy Awards (including Best Picture), a Grammy and a Golden Globe.


It's a film sparked by two fantastic star performances, an impeccable supporting cast (including Jeff Corey, Strother Martin, Kenneth Mars, Henry Jones and Cloris Leachman) and a script by Goldman that trots out one quotable line after another.


Fox's DVD is equal to the film in quality. It includes the 45-minute 1970 documentary on making the film, which must rank as one of the finest ever produced, plus interviews with Newman, Redford, Ross, and William Goldman. It also includes fascinating reproductions of the numerous memos, script revisions and letters sent back and forth by Goldman, Hill, producer Paul Monash and Fox executive Richard Zanuck, and astute commentary by Hill, Conrad Hall, lyricist Hal David and documentarian Robert Crawford.

The transfer of Conrad Hall's cinematography is flawless -- the movie has simply never looked better, and after years of crappy pan-and-scan television and video airings it's great to see this picture in its original glory again. A magnificent DVD.-- Jeff Bond

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originally posted: 02/24/01 17:26:20
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