37. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

George Roy Hill, 1969

“Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?”

I’ve mentioned the idea of Westerns about the end of the West a couple of times in these pages, but this is the first time I am actually going to talk about one of those pictures. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a film about several things, but the end of the world and the very way of life that was the West is among the most evident. For those of you who have been living in a cave, Butch and Sundance were two of the greatest outlaws of the Old West. They were train robbers, bank robbers, and leaders of The Hole in the Wall Gang. Their names live on in the legends of the West, side by side with Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid. By the time this movie takes place, however, their legends were beginning to fade. As the film opens, Butch and Sundance find one of their men trying to lead a sort of revolt among The Hole in the Wall Gang. Not long after, they thoroughly botch a train robbery by using too much dynamite. After that, the film moves into one of its best sequences as Butch and Sundance ride for miles, attempting to lose a band of lawmen and their Indian tracker. In short, things are not going well for Butch and Sundance. Their way of life, which was clearly the stuff of Western legend, is simply no longer tenable. Director George Roy Hill emphasizes this decline of the Western way of life through the use of inventive and amusing set pieces, including one displaying the bicycle’s ability to replace the horse, through a shooting and narrative style which is alien to the traditional Western, including an inventive sequence involving a series of still photographs of Butch, Sundance, and Etta Place. He also employs a terrific score, which is wholly unorthodox for the genre and was written by Burt Bacharach and featured the single “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” sung by B. J. Thomas.

Still, as great as all this stuff is, and it is great, it isn’t what makes the movie what is. The heart and soul of the film are Butch and Sundance themselves, played in career defining turns by Paul Newman and Robert Redford respectively. Their friendship is what makes the movie the classic it is. In a way, it’s a bit like a buddy cop picture, with the talkative Butch and the solemn Sundance running around America and, later, Bolivia together, cracking wise and robbing banks. The fact that these two are having a great time, permeates the film. Rarely, do you see two men having so much fun and crafting such a believable friendship. The two simply play perfectly off each other. Of course, audiences agreed and the two reteamed, along with George Roy Hill, to make The Sting four years later. Frankly, I don’t like The Sting near as much. Partly, I think that is because of how fresh and vibrant the camaraderie seems on the screen in the early picture. Also, I just think that Butch and Sundance are better characters. Anyway, you do tend to get pretty invested in Butch and Sundance themselves over the course of the film. Unfortunately, this being an end of the West film, things can’t end well for Butch and Sundance. You see, like Wyatt Earp or Wild Bill or Billy the Kid, Butch and Sundance are the West. They embody it. With the West gone, and Bolivia clearly a poor replacement, Butch and Sundance cannot survive. There is some reassurance in that the two go out in a blaze of glory, fighting side by side, the way they should, but that makes the ending gunfight against the Bolivian army no less tragic and no less memorable. The film ends and the West is over and so are Butch and Sundance, but at least it was one hell of a last ride.