I’ve always enjoyed this movie while under no illusion that it’s a classic. But watching it last night I was struck by a moment of ridiculousness that somehow escaped me before.
Butch and Sundance have been pursued on horseback for at least 24 hours by an all-star posse who unfailingly tracks them no matter what they do. They ditch one horse, then the other, and finally jump off a cliff into a river just as the posse is about to gun them down. Miraculously, they survive, getting carried by the rapids to safety.
But that’s not the ridiculous part. That’s coming next.
Cut to the next scene where Etta is waiting for them at home. Butch and Sundance show up, on foot. They’ve somehow walked whatever distance they covered on horseback, all the way back home, without the all-star posse hunting them down. Wouldn’t it have been a relative piece of cake for the posse to just follow the river until they picked up the trail again? And then even easier for them to ride down a couple of guys on foot?
Plus, somehow, the banker who hired the all-star posse never considered hiring someone else to stake out Sundance’s girlfriend’s house.
And then, the three of them travel all the way to New York without the posse picking them up.
Am I missing something obvious, or is this just about the laziest screenwriting ever?
That Etta was Sundance’s girlfriend was not common knowledge, IIRC. Once they are amongst civilization, the tracking methods become much different.
Butch and Sundance arrive at Etta’s on foot but it not explained how long they walked or if they had any help along the way. (‘borrowed’ a horse, got a ride on a horse and cart-thingy-whachamacallit)
The posse would have had to go back the way the came (at least a day) and then follow the river, but would not know which side of the river they come out of.
I think that was it. The guys in the posse weren’t going to jump off the cliff so it would be a long time before they could pick up the trail again. Remember, they had been trailing them since the train robbery, never that far away or out of sight for long. Picking up the trail again some unknown distance downstream would not be easy so long after they had left.
But they had Lord Baltimore – the world’s best tracker! It wouldn’t have taken that long to retrace their path back to the level of the river, and the river only flows one way. Lord Baltimore should have been able to identify where they emerged from the river and tracked them from there.
I’m going to disagree here - it most certainly is a classic . And the National Film Registry and American Film Institute agree with me.
Anyway they did make a point of saying that the posse would have had come back down the other side of the mountain and they presumably were able to make some time on the river. Could be that in movie the posse just shrugged and decided to wait until they hit another train (in real life the Wilcox posse did indeed lose the real Wild Bunch in the Big Horn Mountains so the broad outlines are correct, though no doubt reality was far less entertaining). That Lord Baltimore (who was entirely fictional, unlike some of the other pursuers like Joe Lefors) could actually track them miles down the river on a day old cold trail is just about as implausible as them getting away by jumping off a cliff .
I agree with it being a classic (it’s the movie I’ve seen the greatest number of times in a theater… probably on subsequent nights the summer after 9th grade, come to think of it).
And I agree with everyone who thinks the posse would’ve been so far behind them once they backtracked… and they would’ve had to ride down one side of the river, and if it was a wide one, even Lord Baltimore could easily miss where they got out on the far side. So they just decided to wait for the next caper.
Just as an aside, William Goldman in Adventures in the Screen Trade said that the cliff jump scene was what people first mentioned to him when talking about the movie. This was despite the fact that it did not really happen. On hearing about the “Super Posse” and who was in it Butch and Sundance immediately took off for South America without being chased by them at all.
Another aside–Redford was fascinated by the landscapes and the lore of the outlaw trail that Cassidy and others traveled. He re-traced the trail himself with some friends (including Ed Abbey) in 1975 and wrote a book about it, The Outlaw Trail: A Journey Through Time. It’s worth a read if you’re a fan.
I find parts of it interminable – the “Raindrops”/bike stunts interlude and the b/w montage of their trip to Bolivia, especially.
Speaking of the bike thing – I cringe when I see how close Katherine Ross’s bare toes are to the front spokes. In grade school I saw a kid get his foot mangled that way. They were able to save his toes but I’ll never forget the blood and the screams.
I’d shorten the bicycle scenes, and excise ‘Raindrops’ entirely, but otherwise it’s a great film. If I had a personal Top 50, it surely would make the cut.
I’ve read somewhere that a non-Western score and the bicycle were innovative and good movie stuff. The bare feet on a bicycle surprised me, too when I saw it a couple hundred years ago.
I really do like this movie, but one final nitpick: The scene where we’re introduced to Etta goes on for a good couple of minutes as if Sundance is going to rape her. It’s all just role playing, of course, which may have seemed funny and sexy in 1969 but sure doesn’t sit well in 2021.
Also, why not shrug and decide to wait? Sure, danger is their business; and, if they can plausibly remain on the hunt for those pistoleros, they’re being paid handsomely to put on a great show of relentlessly getting closer and closer to rifle range — and, minus a plausible excuse to break off the pursuit, to gun down the thieves. But what’s their incentive if they ever do get handed a plausible excuse?
The issue with the scene is that, until the end, you don’t really know what’s happening. Who is this woman? Is he going to rape her? It really comes emotionally out of left field . . . and is designed to make the audience uncomfortable, with the ‘joke’s on the audience’ punchline when she finally says whatever that line is of hers (I can hear her tone, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen it to get the quote right).
It’s not until you’ve already seen the movie (and are in on the ruse being played on the viewers) that you have a chance to view that moment as a sexy reunion.
And that’s why I hate that scene. Because “Is Sundance gonna rape this woman” is not the kind of suspense I signed up for when I started watching the film.
Maybe it was too dramatic. I remember from the first time I saw the movie that I knew it didn’t fit the movie if it turned bad. If that’s not as obvious to others I guess it could have gone to far.
For sure I could see that a savvy movie-goer could tell that something wasn’t quite as presented. Still, even knowing that nothing bad is going to happen in the movie (other than of course the death of Butch and Sundance), it creates a tone that is way more serious than the movie warrants. IMHO, of course.
. And the National Film Registry and American Film Institute agree with me.
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