Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Classic Movie of the Baby Boomer Era

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is director George Roy Hill’s popular revisionist Western and the original “buddy movie” of the Baby Boomer period. Starring Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as Sundance, the film set the stage for movies as disparate as Blazing Saddles, Silverado and Little Big Man while looking back to the first narrative film, Thomas Edison’s The Great Train Robbery.

In many ways, Butch Cassidy did for Westerns what Bonnie and Clyde did for gangster movies. Working from a script by legendary novelist-screenwriter William Goldman, Hill cobbled together a film that was more about the 1960s than the 1890s. Taking a pair of wise-cracking train and bank robbers on a road trip, first through the Old West, then the Bolivian frontier, the movie begins as a comedy of outlaws on the run and ends as a serious drama of anti-establishment heroes gunned down by the far superior forces of the System. Instead of the hopelessness of the Great Depression, Butch and Sundance struggle to find their place in an increasingly urbanized world that no longer needs them or their mythos. 

Using actual details from the well-documented exploits of the “Hole in the Wall Gang,” the film begins with an introduction to the fast-talking Butch and the fast-drawing Sundance during an unfriendly card game. After cleverly besting one of his gang in a knife fight, Butch decides to rob the Union Pacific train coming and going.

The first robbery goes well but the second ends with the gang being pursued by an elite posse hired by the railroad to hunt them down. The posse proves to be so relentless that Butch and Sundance eventually flee the U.S. for easier times in the new mining towns of Bolivia. Not surprisingly, nothing works for the Yankee banditos even when they try to go straight.

Memorable scenes abound in the movie, no doubt the cause of its immense popularity. From the use of too much dynamite on the train’s safe; the jump from a cliff into a raging rapids to escape the posse; trying to rob Bolivian banks without knowing Spanish; to the final shoot-out after robbing a mine payroll, Butch Cassidy proves to be both entertaining and sobering at the same time.

But, like Bonnie and Clyde, it’s the novel combination of older film effects with contemporary techniques that give the movie its unique style. Sudden shifts in mood from the comic to the dramatic, the use of modern vernacular speech, photo montage and pop music (“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”) on one hand and silent movie conventions (title cards, sepia-toned photos, nickelodeon effects) on the other, combine to give the movie the feel of a satire of the standard Western.

And yet, like an old-school Western, there is little blood or gore, only the suggestion of sexual passion and virtually none of the smoking, drinking and cursing outlaws are known for. Even in the final shootout against far superior numbers, Butch and Sundance are not actually shown being riddled with bullets, unlike another Western of the period, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Instead, they are held in a sepia-toned freeze-frame as the sound of the fusilades echo through the soundtrack.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid proved to be a smash hit, raking in $96 million in first release (that’s $560 million in inflation-adjusted dollars). It revived the careers of Newman and Redford, re-established Hill as the director of feel-good movies, and solidified Ross’s standing as a young actress on the way up.

The film won four Oscars; Best Original Screenplay (Goldman), Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall) and Best Original Score and Best Original Song (Burt Bacharach). It’s ranked No. 73 on AFI’s 2007 Best Movie List and was added to the National Film Registry in 2003. Butch Cassidy also led to the making of Hill’s The Sting, an even more successful film starring Newman and Redford.

Butch Cassidy originally clocked in at 110 mins. and received an M rating (now PG) for mild profanity and violence. The film is available on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray with a plethora of special features. Butch Cassidy was one of the first movies to be accompanied by a “making of” documentary which is included in most editions along with later documentaries about making the film and about the outlaws themselves. Be sure to read the product description carefully to get the special features you want at the best price.