MovieChat Forums > Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Discussion > The film's moral perspective

The film's moral perspective

posted 9 years ago by robert3750
24 replies | jump to latest

I find the moral stance of the characters simply unacceptable. They are liars, thieves, and robbers, and it’s ridiculous to portray them as some kind of heroes. Two things stand out as particularly offensive: The scene where Butch tries to justify being a bank robber because being a farmer, rancher, etc. would mean he has to work hard. So WHAT? That does NOT justify robbing people at gunpoint! Then there’s the scene where they kill the bandits trying to steal the payroll, ending with them expressing regret at killing because they’ve gone straight, implying that they were somehow in better shape morally when they were robbing, because they never killed anybody. What nonsense.

[–] asherp 9 years ago

Back in that film generation the Anti-hero was big on the scene...y'know the 60's counter culture and everything which seemed normal and secure turned on its head. Our WWII hero soldiers became the villians in Vietnam...Rock stars became heroes...

The question isn't the morality of the anti-hero....They typically aren't moral characters...But you can pluck an ounce of them fighting society and society's norms and see how that reflects on the times.

Take Cool Hand Luke...Luke is jailed for being a drunk and cutting the heads off of parking meters....he just wanted to stick it to the man. Very typical of that generation.

[–] drsgb 9 years ago

Part of the genius of this film is the audience is strongly rooting for the "bad guys" the entire time. Except for the OP I guess.

[–] ecarle 9 years ago

Its definitely a "you had to be there" thing..but even around the time it came out, it had some enemies.

A few years after "Butch Cassidy" came out, actor/producer Jack Webb...famously the dour star of Dragnet and producer also of "Adam 12"...said that Butch Cassidy inspired him to produce a new TV show: "Hec Ramsey", about a "frontier lawman," starring Richard Boone.

Said Webb of Butch and Sundance: "I had no interest in those two villains, I wanted to do a show about the lawman who ran them down."

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Butch and Sundance ARE robbers, they hold innocent people at gunpoint, they blow up(badly) the clerk Woodcock on the train, and it remains distressing to see them down in Bolivia sticking up what look to be fairly poor and hard-working peasants while "living it up." Think of it: two handsome white guys sticking up South American peasants. I don't think this aspect of Butch and Sundance has survived very well in this day and age.

That said, the movie "gets it" about the price they pay for their criminal profession: early on , Sheriff Bledsoe tells them its too late to go straight, or to go into the Army, and that all that's left is for them to "die bloody." The movie is pretty relentless in showing first the Superposse, and then the Bolivian Army running Butch and Sundance to ground...and ultimately killing them.

But Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the biggest hit of 1969. It tied, as Bonnie and Clyde had, to the rebellion of the Youth Culture against the Man...and Newman and Redford were two guys about as handsome as two guys could ever be. As buddies. To the deathly end. Tossing off cool one-liners even unto death.

[–] liscarkat (18388) a year ago

The fact that they're "handsome white guys" has no relevance to the morality of what they are doing.

[–] Jakezen 9 years ago

You do realize these characters actually existed in real life?

To portray them as saints in the movie would be untrue. Obviously they thought farming/ranching was not for them since they did not do it in real life.

I am not really sure what you are upset about. They were killed in the end for their lawless ways so the movie hardly glorifies what they did.

[–] greenbudgie 9 years ago

You've summed up why I couldn't get into the two lead characters. It wasn't as if they were even clever at what they did. They just survived by sheer luck till the inevitable happened.

[–] lexyladyjax 9 years ago

Way to miss the point. In your ignorance you're exhibiting the classic Historian's Fallacy, Bob. Look it up. Without comprehending the sociology of the era in which the film was made, you're judging something you do not comprehend.

How sad that you cannot get beyond petty morality and see this film for the masterpiece that it is. Its record of 14 British BAFTAS has never been surpassed. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID was the first great another buddy film.

Great white sharks are attracted to death metal music.

[–] clockworkorange13 9 years ago

I gave the movie 10/10 simply because it's a great film but I completely see what you're saying and I was thinking the same thing while watching it. These guys are outright criminals that are robbing and stealing their way through life but the movie presents them like great guys that you want to root for. The way the story and characters were presented in such a light-hearted and 'fun' manor seemed a little strange.

[–] AtoZ2014 8 years ago

Butch never killed anybody until he was a payroll guard and had to do so as it was his job.

[–] johnnm58 (545) 6 years ago

Are you still feeling the same after 3 years? Hehe.

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

If the film has a moral message, it's "You cant get away with this shit".

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

There are other threads here about "bank robber anti-hero movies."

But I always feel about them this way:

In the seventies, in a small town, a woman went into a bank to deposit some proceeds from her church donations.

Some "revolutionary" bank robbers entered with shotguns. They were connected to the Symbionese Liberation Army that had kidnapped Patty Hearts.

And one of them fumbled their shotgun -- and killed the nice lady with the church proceeds.

How would YOU feel if you were banking and the doors flew open and armed men came in and told you to get on the floor?
Terrorized, no doubt.

In some of the bank robber movies of the 60's and 70's, the robbers got killed. But in others...they got away.

I think the genre died out as people came to NEVER support bank robbers as heroes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

If the film has a moral message, it's "You cant get away with this shit".

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And yet, two other bank robber movies -- The Getaway (1972) with Steve McQueen and "Charley Varrick" (1973) with Walter Matthau said: "Yes, you can."

I actually liked those movies at the time. But I think over the decades, audiences did NOT want to see bank robbers get away with terrorizing people. The genre died out.

[–] Otter (24464) 3 years ago

Criminal antiheroes haven't died out, they've just changed with the times. Butch Cassidy has been succeeded by Walter White, and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang by those street racer idiots in the "Fast and Furious" movies. The fantasy of living as an outlaw and not having to obey the rules is still around, sometimes as pure fantasy and sometimes as grim reality.

But the 1969 film still has appeal, it's hilarious and gripping, the stars haven't lost a big of charisma in fifty years, and people still feel like there was a Good-Old-Days time when it was possible to get away with anything. That's pervasive in "BTatSK", the feeling that the wild days of the frontier are ending, and all the thoughtless fun in the world is being lost. I suppose you could say that this movie is a metaphor for growing up... or not wanting to grow up.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Criminal antiheroes haven't died out, they've just changed with the times. Butch Cassidy has been succeeded by Walter White, and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang by those street racer idiots in the "Fast and Furious" movies.

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Oops. I suppose my reply should be "D'Oh!" Of course movies and cable/streaming series about criminals are still popular. Half of the works of Tarantino and many of Scorsese's. The Sopranos. Breaking Bad. There's a rather "lesser" crooks series based on the movie Animal Kingdom which nonetheless posits a psychotic woman who has raised all her children to be robbers. The whole family is daft.

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The fantasy of living as an outlaw and not having to obey the rules is still around, sometimes as pure fantasy and sometimes as grim reality.

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I suppose what has changed since the days of Butch Cassidy and The Getaway is the idea that these people should be admired or even liked. The Sopranos and Breaking Bad tell us that criminals --whether born(Tony Soprano) or made (Walter White) are ultimately predatory monsters upon society and we may enjoy hanging out with them and watching them kill OTHER monsters -- but we don't really root for them.

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CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

But the 1969 film still has appeal, it's hilarious and gripping, the stars haven't lost a big of charisma in fifty years,

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As with The Sting four years later, Newman and Redford established themselves as "the gold standard of male movie stars" -- important, entertaining, and handsome -- and chose two good scripts to showcase that. In the 70's a number of the other male stars were not at their level (Segal, Gould, O'Neal) or were off in macho B-land(Eastwood, Reynolds, Bronson) for awhile, or were a bit too "real" to be fun movie stars(Nicholson, DeNiro, Pacino.) Paul and Bob brought old-time glamor AND Method-man depth to their roles.

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and people still feel like there was a Good-Old-Days time when it was possible to get away with anything. That's pervasive in "BTatSK", the feeling that the wild days of the frontier are ending, and all the thoughtless fun in the world is being lost. I suppose you could say that this movie is a metaphor for growing up... or not wanting to grow up.

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Yes, that metaphor is there. The "buddy picture" went back to Gable and Tracy, but Newman and Redford reinvented it for a new era of young males -- and boy did we follow them. Buddies do NOT want to grow up, but we must, and -- for the luckiest of us -- we keep those buddies into later age and try to bring back the past just a little.

Other buddies in the 70's included: Redford and George Segal(The Hot Rock, script by William Goldman who wrote Butch); Newman and Lee Marvin(Pocket Money), McQueen and Hoffman(Papillon), Redford and Hoffman(All the President's Men, script by Goldman); Pacino and Hackman(Scarecrow -- a grim drama with humor), Gould and Sutherland(the great MASH, the lousy SPIES), Caan and Arkin(Freebie and the Bean); Caan and Gould(Harry and Walter Go to New York); Connery and Caine(The Man Who Would Be King) Reynolds and Hackman(Lucky Lady) ...why, the list goes on and on.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Briefly on Bonnie and Clyde.

This was a bank robber movie, and a big one, a famous one. As with Psycho before it and The Wild Bunch after it, the bloody violence brought to an old genre was part of the sale, as was the perverse tagline "They're young, they're in love...and they kill people."

It is said that 60's radicals and counterculturalists made heroes of B and C, but the film paints them as rather scary figures: rather dumb, hair-trigger, and likely psychotic. One comes to dread them when they meet up with a sheriff (and capture him) and a nice young couple (Gene Wilder) among them. Will these people die?

Bonnie and Clyde met a famous bloody end, and whether or not it is tragic remains open.

Years later -- 2019? -- a movie starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrellson called "The Highwaymen" took up the tale of the feds who hunted Bonnie and Clyde. In one scene, a gas station man brags about how great Bonnie and Clyde are, real heroes -- and Harrelson (or Costner) beats the man to a pulp.

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Speaking of robbers you just HATE: Tim Roth and Hunnybunny in Pulp Fiction, robbing the restaurant. Don't you just want Sam Jackson to blow them away? Punks. He spares them and the movie feels a bit off kilter because of it.

[–] marktayloruk (2502) 2 years ago

Some do some don't.