Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1969, 110 min
Section: Tribute to Robert Redford

Synopsis

Legendary outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) make a living robbing trains. But during one of their hold-ups they are ambushed by hired guns. An exhausting chase ends with the bandits jumping off a cliff into white water. After a short stay in New York, Butch, Sundance and his lover Etta take off for Bolivia where they "what else" - rob banks. After an incident involving some local bandits, the duo’s identity is revealed. Butch and Sundance find themselves surrounded by the police and the army.... In this tale of two amiable adventurers, it seems as if a period photograph has come to life. The film’s anti-idyllic description of the robbing trade is lightened by romantic sequences - for example, the famous bicycling scene set delightfully to the Oscar-winning song "Raindrops Keep Fallin" on My Head. In addition, a stylized, painterly landscape and sarcastic humour add their own particular twist to this already non-traditional western. Proof of the film’s production and editing bravura is given in the final shootout, conceived as a zigzag run through a living shooting range. And the final shot transforms the duo into "immortals" of photography.

About the director

George Roy Hill (1921-2002) liked flying from an early age. He studied music at Yale University and flew supply missions in the Pacific during the war. In the Korean War he was a flight instructor. Afterward, he became a screenwriter, producer and director of television theatre productions. He also worked directing for the stage, and he debuted in motion pictures with an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play Period of Adjustment (1962). He shot part of the screen version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) in Czechoslovakia, and the peak of his career came with the period gangster film The Sting (1973), which took seven Oscars. Robert Redford starred in the air adventure The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), Paul Newman headlined the 1976 hockey comedy Slap Shot, and the director cast Robin Williams in the John Irving novel adaptation The World According to Garp (1982). On three of his films (Slaughterhouse-Five, The World According to Garp, and Funny Farm) Hill worked with celebrated Czech director of photography Miroslav Ondříček.