Day 120: "Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?"

So today I took another trip down American cinema memory lane and decided on the 1969 classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Directed by George Roy Hill four years before his other classic, The Sting,  this is another amazing film from the early years of, what I call, the Second Golden Age of American Cinema.  Beautifully shot, Butch Cassidy is very much the basis for the modern Western.  Up to this point, Westerns portrayed a very romantic view of the old west.  John Wayne was always the good guy, the bad guys wore black, and everyone knew who would win in the end.  Beginning with Butch Cassidy, and in the same year, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, turned the genre on it's ear.  These two films stripped away the established notions of right and wrong and good and bad to introduce the anti-hero to Westerns.  Throughout the entire movie Butch and Sundance share such a close bond and are so affable, that the audience can't help but to cheer for them.  On the flip side, they are hard drinkers, womanizers and, most significantly, armed robbers.  These two rob banks, then pontificate on why the bank is no longer the beautiful place they remember.  They rob trains, only to come across the same poor sap guarding the safe car, and ask if he is ok from the last time that they had to blow the door open.  The first half of the movie is a chase film, with a robbery going awry, and an unknown, absolutely relentless posse chasing them.  From there, they take their talents way south of the border to Bolivia, where the remainder of the story plays out to one of the classic endings of all time.

This was the first film to feature Robert Redford and Paul Newman together, and their chemistry was instantly apparent.  I commented in an earlier post how goo these two are together, and Butch Cassidy is no exception.  I still cannot get over what a natural talent Redford is in front of the camera.  I never understood the old saying that "the camera loves [insert name]," but watching him, I do now.  Everything from his facial expressions to his perfect timing delivering his lines, Redford is brilliant.  Oh yeah, Newman is great too, but I was already aware of his particular skills.

Apart from, what can only be described as, the world's first music video in the first twenty minutes (the stupidly sappy "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head"), which my brother-in-law refers to as an "acid trip in the middle of an awesome movie", and a bizarrely misplaced score, this is another American masterpiece.  If there was a way to edit out that ridiculous bike riding scene (if you've seen this movie, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about), I'd have rated this higher, but it was the sixties I suppose....*sigh*.  Great film, check it out.  9.25/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!