Paul Newman is a one of a kind actor. He was really good in The Verdict. Other good ones,..The Hustler. It's sequel years later is The Color of Money directed by Martin Scorsese. He teams up again with Robert Redford in The Sting, which co-stars Robert Shaw. Not just a good movie, but a classic.
Ah, you missed the best part of that line, "I can't swim!" "The fall will probably kill you!" is one of the all-time great lines. Goldman loved that line in particular, 'cause he loved writing the script, knowing a secret, 'cause he knew Sundance couldn't swim, an he just loved writing the script, just getting him to there. Also, did you notice who played the blonde hooker was in that scene with Butch? That's CLORIS LEACHMAN!!!!!! Go rewatch it and check.
Yes, the general time period in which the story of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” takes place is the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th. The Spanish-American War took place in 1898, by the way. The historical moment that the film explores is the end of the “Wild West” era of American history and the closing of the frontier, the transition that is taking place to a more recognizably modern world. And the question the film asks is what happens to these “Wild West” characters after the “Wild West” era ends and is replaced by a world in which they no longer really belong? A number of other movies made at about the same time also explore this historical period and ask the same question: Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969) with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine; and John Wayne’s last film, “The Shootist” (Don Siegel, 1976) with Lauren Bacall.
I think Sepia was used as an homage to early films. My favorite scene was actually cut from the final film. It can be seen in the "making" of documentary. In it...Butch, Sundance and Etta visit a small Bolivian cinema. The silent film from the credits is playing. Butch and Sundance are at first flattered, then shocked and confused as the audience "hiss" and "boo" when the cinema version of Butch & Sundance are on screen. I guess they finally clued in that they are the "bad guys". Great documentary....it may still be on RU-vid. Thank you for reviewing....very much enjoyed it!
Very under-reacted '60s classic, thanks! Not a parody, but a highly fictionalized version of the factually unknown demise of two actual famous outlaws. I like Newman and Redford even better in The Sting. And geezers like me can never forget Katherine Ross in The Graduate.
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head was written for this movie, and the Song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, they won the Oscar for best movie song. BJ Thomas sings it. The studio version is separate from the movie, and was a #1 record in early 1970. People STILL remember this song.
One of my most memorable cinema experiences was watching this film while seated behind some Spanish speakers who laughed their heads off at Butch's struggles with the language.
Hi Shanelle. As much as you appreciate well written dialog, I have no doubt you'd love Casablanca. It's pretty amazing. If you haven't seen it, you really should.
I loved this movie as a kid when it came out, and it's aged really well. You probably already know this, but Redford was a founder of the Sundance Film Festival, which is named after his character in this film. You're right; definitely not classic western. It was one of many late sixties / early 70's films that elevated anti-heroes and anti-establishment themes, which wasn't very common during the decade or two before that.
The events in this film take place in 1900. In 1901, Butch bought property in Argentina. There is speculation they actually survived the attack in Bolivia. People recall seeing Burch in 1910. Others say they died in Bolivia. On a side note, I had to opportunity to spend a day with Paul Newsman ad his w2ife, Joanne Woodward during qualifications at the Indianapolis 500. I had released a song about his racing partner< Mario Andretti and Paul invited me to spend qualifications outside their RV inside the track. Nice people, Every time Paul saw I was without a beer he would offer another.
So, it wasn't a parody of Westerns. However, it did stand Westerns on its head. This was one of the first Westerns where 'the good guys' didn't wear a white hat and have a Marshall's badge. The good guys robbed banks and trains, a job that was only suitable for the bad guys in an old fashioned Western. Many did *NOT* like rooting for the 'bad guys'. And yet ... most did and the genre was never the same. 😉
Actually, back in those times, outlaws WERE considered ""good guys" because banks were always charging too much and foreclosing on and taking people's properties and lands, so anyone who was a thorn in their side, especially if they then spent that money in local establishments and didn't hurt or kill people all the time, was considered a hero.
@@stevenediger7945 Yup. Like I said, the good guys robbed banks and trains ... not things the old fashioned heroes did. So yeah, the anti-hero. As I said, one of the first. Cool beans. 😎
"The Hustler" (1961) - starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, and Jackie Gleason - "Fast Eddie" Felson gets humbled - razor sharp screenplay and acting - in glorious widescreen black and white.
I first saw this movie in 1969 at a local movie theater in Suffern, NY where it played most of the summer. The theater, the Lafayette Theater, was and still is a single screen movie palace with 924 seats and a Wurlitzer organ and will be 100 years old next year.
You're absolutely right shanelle they don't make films like this anymore now that a lot of movies use blue/green screen and digital but they have their uses. You should check out "the sting" from 1973 with Robert Redford and Paul Newman which was also directed by George Roy Hill. Enjoy the rest of your week ❤️👍
They were the Leo and Brad of their day. Actually Redford kind of passed his role/scepter to Pitt for real. He was Brads old Star new upcoming Star counterpart in a film called Spygame and apparently had a genuine friendship that developed through that role.
I think Newman kind of tried the same passing of the baton to Tom Cruise with the remake of "The Hustler". For sometime I fancied a remake of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
This is a great, great movie, and I'm pleased to see it included on your channel. A lot of people are suggesting you should watch "The Sting" as a follow-up, and I think you should listen to them.
So much of this soundtrack cuts me to the quick today. I feel wave after wave of bittersweet nostalgia _for_ these characters, because they can't feel it for themselves. That instrumental tune "Not Goin' Home Anymore" hits me hardest.
Highly entertaining and subverts your expectations (that iconic freeze frame ending is everything) and the ulitimate DynamicDuo buddy film Newman & Redford became best friends IRL (trivia note: originally Steve McQueen was to be Butch and Newman Sundance but it fell apart and Newman went to bat for Redford since at that time he was not an A-lister; this film changed that) And yep this is where Redford got the name for the Sundance Film Festival. If you haven't seen THE STING you should - it's their 2nd and sadly last parinig together and its a hoot. At the time of his death they were planning on another team-up.
Great movie, one of the best of it's time. The "Big Guy" in the beginning was Ted Cassidy, better known as "Lurch" in the Addams Family television series of the 60's. The "Raindrops Are Falling On My Head" song by BJ Thomas was introduced in this movie, and enjoyed it's popularity because of that. Paul & Robert had incredible chemistry, and I highly suggest "The Sting," which has much of the similar flavor of comedy and drama, and the chemistry of Newman & Redford. Yeah, I saw it first run in the theaters with my parents. I was in my mid-teens at the time, and my parents were both actors, having met on stage in a play, so they loved the movies. Excellent reaction to a wonderful movie.
Classic cinema goes way back before this one. Examples Casablanca, Wizard of Oz , I Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, Gone With the Wind, any Marx Brothers movies, Citizen Cane, The Grapes of Wrath, Laurel and Hardy movies/film shorts, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and Modern Times, The Kid...etc.. SO MANY MORE. You're smart and I know if you react to these we'll get an intelligent thoughtful response.
For another film with beautiful cinematography, you should check out 1983’s “High Road to China”. I think you would love it and it is an overlooked movie that I think many would enjoy.
"The average shot is 2.5 seconds." In 1962, the Oscar for Cinematography went to The Longest Day for a two minute, continuous shot (the attack on Ouistreham) involving over 200 extras, explosions and gunfire.
BC & tSK is fun and crafty. I love the sepia tone because the movie does 2 things simultaneously - it's recreating a past fully aware that a modern audience is interpreting its recreation in the modernist late '60s hence the pop score being a commentator rather than.sonething more traditionally narrative and atmospheric and it starts in sepia tone, has a sepia tone intermission of snapshots, and ends in sepia tone once again making its audience aware of wanting to be involved in its present (the overall color of the movie) while looking into a past that is gone..
The great Conrad Hill shot this -- won that Oscar. Hill is a legend. Kind of the cinematographer's cinematographer. Have you seen the Tom Hanks gangster pic Road to Perdition? Some of Hill's best work -- simply stunning.
Shanelle is great at pointing out details that I never use to notice. I literally have a higher appreciation for movies I already love, because she dives in deeper than I normally do into a movie!!!
I watched this in the theatre in 1969. I was nine years old and we went as a group for a birthday party. We all thought is was great. I remains one of my favourite films. My Dad was two years younger than Paul Newman and bore a striking resemblance to him. Many people commented on it.
I walked into a bar in Orlando back in the 80s and BJ Thomas was literally 6ft away on stage singing raindrops, such a random moment but unforgettable, thanks Shanelle!
Don't like to order people about, but in this case, you HAVE to watch The Sting, which was a direct result of the chemistry on the screen between Newman and Redford. And trust me, you will be stung by the plot twists. And somewhere down the line, I hope you watch and react to the recent movie, Red, White, & Royal Blue.
Yeah when I was in my twenties, my best friend's girlfriend, I became really good friends with her. We would go to the movies together and out to eat and everything else. It was purely platonic. My best friend was the only one who actually realize that. It's one of the best friendships I've ever had. She would always try to set me up with her friends.
They filmed a whole New York sequence using the sets from _Hello Dolly!_ but when that film went way behind schedule so its release date slipped to after _Butch and Sundance’s_ the _Hello Dolly!_ people wouldn’t let them use it, because they didn’t want people thinking they used sets from _Butch and Sundance,_ hence the middle sepia stills sequence.
William Goldman referred to their "Talking about the future at the very end" as "Stupid Courage." That is to say, Courage in the face of impossible odds. His two favorite examples were "Gunga Din," and "Porgy and Bess."
This is my favorite movie of all time. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are great, but we should never forget the writer William Goldman, who also wrote The Princess Bride.
The Sundance Institute was founded by Redford and named for the Sundance Kid. Katherine Ross was in "The Graduate", her costar Anne Bancroft married Mel Brooks. (One of them got ripped off). I recommend "Fort Apache" for your next Western.
There was epic rain in Southern California during the 1968-69 rain season, with a lot of flood damage. So it makes sense that there would be that much water in a Malibu creek.
I'm not partial to westerns but i saw this for the first time a couple years ago and loved it. Became my favorite western after that. Unless you count Blazing Saddles or BTTF Part 3, but that feels like a gray area.
According to the book _The Princess Bride,_ when Goldman was writing the cliff scene, he was thinking of “the Cliffs of Insanity” from his favourite story that his dad used to read to him when he was sick.
I went to see this at the movie theater when it was first released and loved it , my older bro invited me to go and yes I went and it is great to see others realize how great it was ..
This probably has the longest chase sequence of all-time: About 32 minutes from the time the Superposse jumps off the train to the time they jump off the cliff
Someone has probably said it already, but Newman, Redford and the director collaborated again a few years later on The Sting, which was a Best Picture winner.
Remember watching the 1971 TV series "Alias Smith and Jones" which was a kind of spin off. With a similar pair of outlaws who had to "stay out of trouble" for a year to receive "amnesty", but nobody "except you, me and the governor" will know about it.
The two stars were in their prime here. The steam train from Durango to Silverton runs along the place where they jumped into the river. Robert Redford directed A River Runs Through It years later, always a fan of the American West.
I was 13 when this great movie was released and my parents wouldn't let see it because it had too much swearing in it. The sad reality for Butch and the Kid was that they were born 20 years too late to survive as bandits in the west. Sam Elliot met Katherine Ross, the teacher, on set and they later married and have been together ever since. Redford, who was a serious skier married a Utah girl and invested in Sundance initially as a ski resort. It became a haven for film study and later a festival. Mad Magazine parodied this as "Butch Casually and the Somedunce Kid. It has a great frame of Harvey's eyes-crossed expression after Butch kicks him in the groin. It still makes me smile thinking about it.
Shanelle, thank you for visiting the Western...in the 60s the Western Genre changed, from the cowboy rides away, to the anti hero. Sooo I'm suggesting a few of greatestest Westerns of the late 60s late 70s... THE SEARCHERS, THE WILD BUNCH, THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, ....
There is an old idea in filmmaking... "Never show your heros die". This is a perfect example of it, as is The Alamo. There's a very good reference to this movie in "Beverly Hills Cop" staring Eddie Murphy, if you want a great comedy to watch.
Westerns have certainly run the gamut from white hat good guys to slo-mo spattery shoot-outs. Butch and Sundance is one of my favorites. You may also want to check out Silverado for another ‘modern’ take on the genre. Loved your reaction, as always. Peace …
Caught Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (BC&TSK) at a matinée in 1969. As you noted, much of the first part of the film was shot in Utah. This film still makes me nostalgic for my home state, though it is much changed in the decades since I lived there. Redford bought a ski resort that was located on east side of Mount Timpanogos in Utah’s Wasatch Range. He changed the resort’s name from Timp Haven to Sundance. The Sundance Film Festival grew out of activities that Redford fostered, first at the Sundance Resort, then later at Park City, a revived and repurposed mining town a bit to the north. BT&TSK was shot on film, reportedly using Panavision Silent Reflex PSR cameras. Just as a guess, it may have been shot on either Kodak’s Eastmancolor or on Technicolor film stock. The best film had about another quarter century of imaging dominance before digital imaging really drew equal.
"Do you think you used enough dynamite there Butch" (such a great line! A scene echoed in The Italian Job With Michael Caine "your only supposed to blow the bloody doors off"
Nice reaction Shanelle. This was one of the classic anti-establishment, dark hero films that were popular in the late 60s early 70s. George Hill really had a vision with the film. "Superposse" shots were so powerful representing the future that is coming for these guys (even the sound is impressive, especially in a theater).
Fingers crossed that your next reaction is "The Sting" (1973) Redford and Newman team up again. The movie won like seven Academy awards. Was voted a top 25 (?) screenplay ever written. (You love a good screenplay !) 💚💚
The people chasing them were from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They were well known for never giving up and always getting their man. Steve McQueen was originally cast as Sundance but quit over a dispute about top billing. Other well known actors were considered for the role before Paul Newman's wife, actress Joanne Woodward suggested a up-and-coming young actor named Robert Redford, but the studio said no. Newman was already an established name at the time and the studio wanted an equally well-known costar. Eventually, Newman, Woodward, and director George Roy Hill managed to convince the studio to give Redford a shot.
Thank you for the reaction! I think that the sepia at the start was a nod to the past, as it moved to the future with color. When they went to NYC, it zoomed into the street scene onto a "horseless carriage" - back to sepia, "old timers" visiting the future, then back to the past in Bolivia, which is where their end came.
This film is LEGENDARY as far as I'm concerned, regardless of it's impact on the genre (or, rather, lack thereof). I didn't catch it in '69 or '70, 'cause I'm not that decrepit. I caught this on a crappy old B&W GE TV set in the very late '80s or early '90s. To me, that's just the way to watch these old movies. That's also how I caught Sergio Leone's Dollar Trilogy. And loved your reaction to it as well, so glad you liked it. 🥰
Great that you finally got to this one, Shanelle. It's regarded as one of the greatest Hollywood scripts - the likes of Aaron Sorkin cites it as his favourite - and maybe, you were a bit impatient with the narrative (not all films have to follow a script template) but it was great that you commented on the sepia tones and the beauty of the film being shot on film. You have obviously watched Bonnie and Clyde as you referenced it because what's sometimes known as the golden age of Hollywood from 1967-76 was when Butch Cassidy was made and just as Bonnie and Clyde was a modern version of the gangster film, Butch Cassidy was a modern version of the western. So, I think the use of 'Raindrops', the montages and the light-hearted banter between the two leads were ways of achieving this. As for the sepia tones, as the film starts with a faux home movie-style footage it is trying to establish to a 1960s audience that this happened a long time ago. The movie has a nostalgic, romanticised view of the west as, in the 1960s, the type of heroism depicted in classic westerns seemed out of date. So, the film is a modernised version of the western , lamenting the demise of a certain kind of heroism from America's past, whilst acknowledging in both their casual, jokey banter and their bloody demise, a more modern sensibility in a country undergoing turbulent and violent but inevitable cultural change.
It's a great buddy movie and my favourite western and I think with the cleverly written dialogue I think keeps it appealing to modern audiences too, making it a pretty timeless movie. A shame you didn't show your reaction to the famous nut kick though, by the way Logan was Lurch in the Addams family series. Another western I can recommend is The Quick and the Dead, featuring Sharon Stone as the protagonist, in case you'd like to see a lady gunslinger for a change. It is all about quick draw duels, featuring a lot of very well known actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Russel Crowe before their big breakthroughs. It's made by Sam Rami and it's a visual spectacle, they really get creative with the shots, many beautiful shots too. It can be a bit over the top here and there, but Gene Hackman makes for a great villain. Sharon Stone holds her own too, I like that she does play someone who shows fear and isn't just being a badass all the time.
Three years after this movie, Paul Newman did “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”, a (loosely) reality based comedy western about one of America's historically most beloved tyrants. Within his jurisdiction Judge Bean's rule was absolute, and the main rule he believed in was that if you hurt other people, you didn't deserve any chance to ever do it again. Right up to through Paul Newman's last interview, he always said that "Judge Bean" was his favorite of all of the performances he ever gave.
They would have survived if there was an agreement for a sequel. BTW, Newman's charity for disabled kids (largely funded by Newman's Own brand) is named the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.
3:58 - I see what you mean. The way things are framed give it a tinge of claustrophobia to accentuate the tension. But I'd hold back from zooming out. Unsettling the audience is something I consider sacred in the art of filmmaking. 😊
The jumping scene with the "Ohhhhhh, sh******ttttt!!!" was the first movie I saw with swearing in it. I remember commenting to my Mom about that so long ago. Cool memory!!
My dad loves cowboy type things in general and this hit him at a sweet spot in 1969 - the first movie he saw with my mom on their honeymoon. The soundtrack record was in heavy rotation while I was growing up and when VHS happened, we finally got to see it too. Loved it even more ever since. William Goldman makes very quotable scripts; his other big cowboy one was Maverick. Highly recommend that one!
Great reaction as always Shan. If you haven't seen it you should really watch Newman and Redford in The Sting. great story and cast. Not a western. Another great non western with an amazing cast is The Great Escape (Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson and soooo many others). For more westerns with great casts, stories and a laugh or two (in some of them) Silverado (Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, Scott Glen), the original Magnificent Seven ( Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn), The cowboys (John Wayne and a cast of young actors), McClintock (John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara), The Shootist (John Wayne, Ron Howard, Lauren Bacall). Also the miniseries Lonesome Dove (Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover). Great 4 part series. Really fine acting. Hope you enjoy any that you try. Working my way through your other vids. Stay safe, well and adorable.
Great reaction throughout, and I was tickled at 14:14. How nice that the good lawman was helpful offering his wares and fabrics and the utility of these. To any "creatives" out there taking note, please play responsibly.
Funny. For some reason I don't consider this to be in the "early film era", especially since I saw it on Christmas break in my HS Senior year with my lovely girlfriend in El Paso, TX. Oh, guess that was back in my "early me era"! Ha, Ha! Thanks for posting your reaction.
If you want to see one of not only the best made westerns of all time, but one of the best made films of all time, you need to watch the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. There is nothing like it's vibe. So many artistic choices in the film-making.
