Logan challenges Cassidy to a knife fight over the gang's leadership. Cassidy defeats him using trickery, but embraces Logan's idea to rob a Union Pacifictrain on both its eastward and westward runs, agreeing that the second robbery would be unexpected and likely reap more money than the first.
The first robbery goes well. To celebrate, Cassidy visits a favorite brothel in a nearby town, where the town marshal unsuccessfully attempts to organize a posse to track down the gang, only to have his address to the townsfolk hijacked by a friendly bicycle salesman. Sundance, meanwhile, visits his lover, schoolteacher Etta 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 much dynamite to blow open the safe. 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 seek amnesty from the Sheriff Bledsoe, to no avail.
The posse remains in pursuit, and it includes renowned Indian tracker "Lord Baltimore" and lawman Joe Lefors, recognizable by his white skimmer. 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 head E. H. Harriman to remain on their trail until they are both killed.
Cassidy convinces Sundance and Place that the three should go to Bolivia, 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 little Spanish 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 as Los 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 as payroll guards for a mining company. However, they are ambushed by local bandits 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 a burro used to carry it, and arrive in a small town. A boy recognizes the burro's livestock branding and alerts the police, leading to a gunfight with the outlaws. Cassidy has to make 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 the Bolivian Army. The pair charge 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 a freeze-frame shot of the two bandits.
William Goldman first came across the story of Butch 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 that Scott 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]
Development
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 is John 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 to Jack Lemmon, whose production company, JML, had produced the film Cool 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 were Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty, who both turned it down, with Beatty claiming that the film was too similar to Bonnie 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 film The Towering Inferno. Redford took the role as he liked the script and as well his talent's pushed for him to get it.[12][13]Jacqueline Bisset was a top contender for the role of Etta Place.[14]
Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" for the film. Some felt the song was the wrong tone for a western, but George Roy Hill insisted on its inclusion.[16]Robert Redford, one of the stars of the films, 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, in New Haven, Connecticut. The premiere was attended by Paul Newman, his wife Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford, George Roy Hill, William Goldman, and John Foreman, among others.[18] It opened the next day in New York City[1] at the Penthouse and Sutton theatres.[19]
Home media
The film became available on DVD on May 16, 2000, in a Special Edition that is also available on VHS.[citation needed]
Reception
Box office
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 in theatrical 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]
It was the eighth-most-popular film of 1970 in France.[26]
Critical response
At the time of release, reviewers gave the film mediocre grades, and New York and national reviews were "mixed to terrible" though better elsewhere, screenwriter William Goldman recalled in his book Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade.[27]
New York Times film reviewer Vincent 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]
Time magazine 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 a Batman 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's review of the movie was a mixed 2.5 out of 4 stars. He praised the beginning of the film and its three lead actors, but felt the film progressed too slowly and had an unsatisfactory ending. But after Harriman hires his posse, Ebert thought the movie's 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]
Over time, major American movie reviewers have been widely favorable. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 88% approval rating based on 60 reviews and an average score of 8.2/10. 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."[42]
A parody titled "Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid" was published in Mad. It was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Arnie Kogen in issue No. 136, July 1970.[45]
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 654–655 [1]
