Wonderful Westerns: ‘The Wild Bunch’ (1969) and ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (1969)
In 1969 two films were released that signaled the end of traditional Westerns. First was the taboo-breaking, ultra-violent, and controversial Sam Peckinpah masterpiece The Wild Bunch (1969). The second film was the more lighthearted and fun adventure, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which united the powerhouse onscreen duo of Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
I’m going to talk about these two in the same post to show you how both films, while very different in tone and style, are very similar and convey a similar message. That message being, “The times, they are a-changin’”
The first thing these films have in common is the story, and by that, I mean the basic outline is similar. In The Wild Bunch, we have group of aging outlaws who take part in one last score as their time begins to fade. With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, we have the famous outlaws of the same name try to avoid the law by escaping to Bolivia as the century’s end draws near. Already you can see a similar theme: the twilight of the Western outlaw is upon the cowboys. The difference between two is that they take drastically different approaches to the story.
There’s a good chance that even if you’ve never seen The Wild Bunch, you at least know of the violence in the film and the final gunfight that has made pretty much every “Best Movie Gunfights” list. This violence was so controversial that the MPAA was planning on rating the movie X. At the time, this was the most restrictive rating a film could get. Even before it was re-released in 1993, it had to be resubmitted to the NPAA to see if it could keep its R rating instead of elevating it to NC-17.
The final gunfight was and still is rather revolutionary and amazing! With its fast-paced editing, excellent sound design, and tense build-up, it still holds up as a one of the finest examples of a cinematic gun ballet. One reason is probably because Peckinpah wanted to break that romanticized perception of the Old West, and a lot of this was due to America’s growing frustration with the Vietnam War. The film takes place in 1913, on the verge of World War I, and the characters use different variations of the classic Western movie arsenal; during the final gunfight, they even using a large Browning machine gun (yes, it’s anachronistically incorrect, but still). These gun changes can show how drastically — and violently — things were changing.
This, of course, was not the first film to display this type of violence, Bonnie & Clyde (1967) being the finest example. This was a Western that showed that the days of your dad’s Westerns was ending, and that the characters are not the clean-cut, 10-gallon-hat-wearing, clearly defined good guys. The lines are blurred by the fact that the first thing we see our main characters doing is robbing a bank. And the figurative cherry on top of this sundae is when the leader, Pike Bishop (William Holden) says, “If they move, kill ‘em!”
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is almost the polar opposite of this film. While Butch Cassidy doesn’t pull punches when it comes to what happens to these characters, it does take a more lighthearted tone for the most part. The story demonstrates how the almost idealist lifestyle of the two title characters is slowly declining as the times change. A big symbol for these changing times is the bicycle. Yes, you read that correctly — a bicycle. With The Wild Bunch, we saw the advancement of guns being used as a symbol for changing times, and here we have the humble bicycle.
The first example of this comes when a sheriff (Kenneth Mars) tries to round up a posse to chase after Cassidy (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) after the film’s first robbery but isn’t able to get anyone to volunteer. That’s when a bike salesman (Henry Jones) steps in and pitches his latest product. Cassidy, who’s been in the town this whole time with Sundance, buys a bike and uses it to woo the lovely schoolteacher — and Sundance’s lover — Etta Place (Katharine Ross) with a romantic bike ride, which leads to probably the most famous scene of the movie, featuring “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” by B.J. Thomas. This song, by the way, won Best Original Song at the Oscars that year.
But the ideal lifestyle is changed, and after a long and awesome chase scene, Cassidy, Sundance, and Etta run off in an attempt to escape the posse. The scene ends with Cassidy chucking the bike off to the side, saying, “The future’s all yours, you lousy bicycles.”
After several bank robberies in Bolivia, the two try to change their ways by assimilating as guards on a mining company’s payroll. But after their boss (Strother Martin) is killed, the payroll is stolen, the robbers are killed, and Etta leaves the group, they realize that they’ll probably never escape, and like The Wild Bunch, the movie ends with an impressive gunfight.
The other big thing that these film have in common is that both are helmed by two great directors and have marvelous casts. With The Wild Bunch, we have Peckinpah as the director and stars William Holden, Warren Oats, Ben Johnson, Edmond O’Brien, Robert Ryan and one of my favorite actors of all time – Ernest Borgnine. Butch Cassidy and the Sundace Kid, on the other hand, was the first collaboration between actors Paul Newman and Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill. The film also stars two Young Frankenstein actors Kenneth Mars (Inspector Kemp) and Cloris Leachman (Frau Blücher), and classic Western character actors Strother Martin and Jeff Corey.
Both are excellent films that share a similar theme and personify a changing time that was happening in American cinema. And, funnily enough, the gang that Cassidy and Sundance were commonly associated with was known as the Wild Bunch. Huh.
