Butch.Cassidy.And.The.Sundance.Kid.1969.DVDr-DVD-Avbild

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were real-life, turn-of-the-century outlaws who, in 1905, packed up their saddlebags, along with Sundance's mistress (a schoolteacher named Etta Place), and left the shrinking American West to start a new life, robbing banks in Bolivia.



According to the movie which opened yesterday at the Penthouse and Sutton Theaters, their decline and fall was the sort of alternately absurd and dreamy saga that might have been fantasized by Truffaut's Jules and Jim and Catherine?before they grew up.



Butch (Paul Newman) is so amiable that it's not until he gets to Bolivia, and is more or less forced to go straight, that he ever brings himself to shoot a man. Sundance (Robert Redford) behaves like the perpetual younger brother. Although confident of his own abilities, he always defers to Butch, whose schemes end in disaster more often than success. Etta (Katharine Ross) is the kind of total woman who can cook, keep house of sorts, seldom grumbles, and, if necessary, will act as third gun.



This is an attractive conceit and much of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is very funny in a strictly contemporary way?the last exuberant word on movies about the men of the mythic American West who have outlived their day. Butch and Sundance have the physical graces of classic Western heros, but all four feet are made of silly putty.



When they try to rob a train and blow open its safe, the dynamite charge destroys not only the safe but also the entire baggage car. When they can escape from a posse only by jumping from a high cliff into a raging rapids below, Sundance must admit ruefully that he doesn't know how to swim.



Later, in Bolivia, their first attempt at bank robbery almost fails when they forget a list of Spanish phrases not included in the ordinary tourist's guidebook: "This is a robbery." "Stand against the wall." "Put up your hands." Butch and Sundance are the fall guys of their time and circumstances, and also of their movie.



George Roy Hill (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii) who directed, and William Goldman, the novelist (Boys and Girls Together) and occasional scenarist (Harper), who wrote the original screenplay, have consciously mixed their genres. Even though the result is not unpleasant, it is vaguely disturbing?you keep seeing signs of another, better film behind gags and effects that may remind you of everything from Jules and Jim to Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch.



In the center of the movie is a lovely, five-minute montage?done in sepia still photographs of the period?showing Butch, Sundance, and Etta having a brief fling in New York and making the steamer passage to South America. The stills tell you so much about the curious and sad relationship of the three people that it's with real reluctance that you allow yourself to be absorbed again into further slapstick adventures.



There is thus, at the heart of Butch Cassidy, a gnawing emptiness that can't be satisfied by an awareness that Hill and Goldman probably knew exactly what they were doing?making a very slick movie. They play tricks on the audience, by turning a bit of melodrama into a comic blackout, and by taking shortcuts to lyricism as when we get an extended sequence showing Butch clowning on a bicycle for the benefit of Etta backed by full orchestra playing Burt Bachrach's latest. I admire Bachrach but he simply is not Georges Delarue, as Hill is not Truffaut; nor, for that matter, is Goldman.



There are some bothersome technical things about the movie (the camera is all zoom, zoom, zoom) but the over-all production is very handsome, and the performances fine, especially Newman, Redford, and Miss Ross, who must be broadly funny and straight, almost simultaneously. They succeed even if the movie does not.



CAST FOR 'BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

Paul Newman - Butch Cassidy

Robert Redford - The Sundance Kid

Katharine Ross - Etta Place

Strother Martin - Percy Garris

Henry Jones - Bike Salesman

Jeff Corey - Sheriff Bledsoe

George Furth - Woodcock

Cloris Leachman - Agnes

Ted Cassidy - Harvey Logan

Kenneth Mars - Marshal

Donnelly Rhodes - Macon

Jo Gilbert - Large Woman

Timothy Scott - News Carver

Don Keefer - Fireman

Charles Dierkop - Flat Nose Curry

Francisco Cordova - Bank Manager

Nelson Olmsted - Photographer

Paul Bryar - Card Player #1

Sam Elliott - Card Player #2

Charles Akins - Bank Teller

Eric Sinclair - Tiffany's Salesman



PRODUCTION CREDITS

Lawrence Schiller - Special Effects

Paul Monash - Executive Producer

Dan Striepeke - Makeup

Richard Meyer - Editor

Walter Scott - Set Designer

Jack Martin Smith - Art Director

Michael Moore - Second Unit Director

David Dockendorf - Sound/Sound Designer

Steven Bernhardt - First Assistant Director

Michael McLean - Casting

John C. Howard - Editor

Chester L. Bayhi - Set Designer

Burt Bacharach - Composer (Music Score)

John C. Foreman - Producer

Conrad L. Hall - Cinematographer

William Goldman - Screenwriter

Art Cruickshank - Special Effects

George Roy Hill - Director

Andrew Horvitch - Editor

L.B. Abbott - Special Effects

Hal David - Songwriter

Edith Head - Costume Designer

Philip M. Jefferies - Art Director



AWARDS

Best Actor (win) - Robert Redford - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Actress (win) - Katharine Ross - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Cinematography (win) - Conrad L. Hall - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Direction (win) - George Roy Hill - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Film (win) - George Roy Hill - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Editing (win) - John C. Howard - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Editing (win) - Richard Meyer - 1970 British Academy Awards

Best Screenplay (win) - William Goldman - 1970 British Academy Awards

100 Greatest American Movies (win) - - 1998 American Film Institute

Best Director (nom) - George Roy Hill - 1969 Directors Guild of America

Best Picture - Drama (nom) - - 1969 Golden Globe

Best Screenplay (nom) - William Goldman - 1969 Golden Globe

Best Original Score (win) - Burt Bacharach - 1969 Golden Globe

Best Original Song (nom) - Burt Bacharach - 1969 Golden Globe

Best Original Song (nom) - Hal David - 1969 Golden Globe

Best Cinematography (win) - Conrad L. Hall - 1969 Academy

Best Director (nom) - George Roy Hill - 1969 Academy

Best Original Screenplay (win) - William Goldman - 1969 Academy

Best Picture (nom) - - 1969 Academy

Best Original Score (win) - Burt Bacharach - 1969 Academy

Best Song (win) - Hal David - 1969 Academy

Best Song (win) - Burt Bacharach - 1969 Academy

Best Sound (nom) - David Dockendorf - 1969 Academy





IMDB-link......: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064115/




Year.............: 1969

Country..........: USA

Audio............: English, German, Spanish

Subtitles........: English, German, Spanish

Video Format.....: widescreen

DVD Source.......: dvd9

DVD Format.......: pal

DVD distributor..:

Program..........: DVDShrink

Bit Rate.........: average





Menus..........: [x] Untouched, intact.

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Video..........: [x] Untouched, intact.

[ ] Re-encoded



DVD-extras.....: [ ] Untouched, intact.

[ ] Stripped

[x] Re-encoded

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DVD-Audio......: [x] Untouched, intact.