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Butch Cassidy and the Westerns of 1969

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
33 replies | jump to latest

Some movie years just sort of develop a theme.

So it was in 1969, when -- at time when "the movie Western was fading away," we got no less than FOUR major, groundbreaking Westerns in the same year.

Two of them were big hits; the other two were critical favorites and evidently made enough money to matter.

The two big hits were "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"(with young stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford -- though Newman had been a star for over a decade) and "True Grit"(with old star John Wayne.)

The two not-so-big hits were : Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent "The Wild Bunch" and Sergio Leone's penultimate spaghetti Western "Once Upon a Time in the West"(without Clint Eastwood, for once, but making Charles Bronson a star and Henry Fonda an ultra-villain.)

Of the four, Butch Cassidy was the biggest hit -- and the biggest hit of the YEAR. Which is interesting, because a lot of critics didn't LIKE Butch Cassidy and gave it poor reviews.

The biggest "hit" against Butch Cassidy was that it wasn't really a Western at all. It was "The Odd Couple on Horseback," a pretty movie, filled with comedy one-liners, with two very handsome men that women could swoon for and men could imagine as their best pals. As one critic put it, "it was like Newman was the Fraternity House President and Redford was the Star College Athlete."

Like those years where there are two volcano movies or two meteor movies or two farm movies, Butch Cassidy was a matched story with Peckipah's The Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch came out first, in the summer, and got reviews split between awestruck(Roger Ebert) and disgusted (Judith Crist) over its shockingly bloody excess(which was the result also of spectacular montage editing.)

Butch Cassidy came out in the fall , got poorly compared to The Wild Bunch...and made a lot more money. Both films were about American outlaws "at the end of the line" heading down South of the Border (Mexico for the Wild Bunch; WAY south of the Border to Bolivia for Butch and Sundance) and meeting their deaths at the guns of the military.

Except while The Wild Bunch showed us every last bullet that punctured its outlaws until bloody death, Butch freezed the frame and left Newman and Redford immortalized in action -- and a best selling poster for dorm rooms.

Add the fact that the REAL Butch Cassidy had a REAL gang named "The Wild Bunch" and you can see the conflict.

During the same summer that Peckinpah's Wild Bunch was blasting and bleeding on the big screen came John Wayne(a peer of Wild Bunch star William Holden, who was also "over the hill") in his great fun role as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. The story(from Charles Portis' best seller) and Wayne in Winter made True Grit a very moving experience indeed but there could be no doubt -- compared to the Panavision big budget sweep of The Wild Bunch and Panavision colorful polish of Butch Cassidy, True Grit looked like a rickety low-budget Henry Hathaway movie and could not compete as "cool." Instead, it was merely great.

I don't recall when "Once Upon a Time in the West" came out, but, as always, it stood out from the All-American product of the year by don't of it sheer weird, Eye-Talian overkill. Gigantic close-ups of actors like Bronson, Fonda...Jack Elam and Woody Strode filling the screen and being held for what felt like MINUTES before anybody spoke or did anything at all. A sort of abstract, lackadaisical approach to plot -- you're never quite sure why things are happening, you just go with the flow. Great vistas, a great Morricone score -- OTHER great stars in Claudia Cardinale(sexy) and Jason Robards(wry, bearded and macho) -- "OATITW" was a movie bound for cult status, apart from the others.

In a final irony, the Best Picture Oscar for 1969 went to a movie called "Midnight Cowboy" so you could say there were FIVE big Westerns that year, except the Stetson-hatted tall cowpoke in Midnight Cowboy(Jon Voight) was a male prostitute in grubby modern-day New York.

And that was kind of it for Westerns as a "dominant genre' a the movies. Irony: Clint Eastwood had no Western that year(he was fighting Nazis "Where Eagles Dare.") Eastwood and John Wayne help up the Western for about 2/3rds of the 70's , and in 1976, John Wayne made his last Western ever(The Shootist, his last MOVIE ever) and Clint Eastwood made his last Western for years(The Outlaw Josey Wales.) Eastwood saw that it was time to abandon the Western if he was to stay a superstar -- though he would make two more (Pale Rider and the magnificent swan song Unforgiven.)

Still, 1969's where it all came to an overall end. The irony is that the biggest hit Western of the year -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- wasn't really a Western at all.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Great post. I'd love to see it expanded. After all, if The Western as a big, mainstream, easy-money-making genre *had* a provisional tombstone there's no reason it should occur strictly within a 12-month period. So... I'm *very* inclined to complete your picture of the End of The Western, centered on but not exhausted by 1968/9, by adding two elegaic films from late in 1970: Little Big Man & The Last Picture Show, and perhaps by setting up the whole bonfire with reference to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). TMWSLV's key line "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" sounded world-wise & cool & cynical at the time but by 1969-1970 it looked like an unhappy & unstable half-way house. The sort of accommodation with the past TMWSLV argued for was, at least in all developed countries, swiftly found to be impossible to maintain. No, the truths about ethnocentrism & racism & genocide & exploitation that framed the West were going to come out & modern folk were going to have to learn to live in the light of their *real* past. LBM is sometimes derided as the first 'woke' western, but its core point was sound: that all serious stories of the West going forward were, at a minimum, going to have to include indigenous voices & perspectives & just generally face a test of truth (no more agreed upon, convenient legends!). When I visited the Little Big Horn battlefield/National Monument back in 1998 it was a little startling to see/hear all the talk there of ethnocentricism & genocidal racism. It was confronting & I'm sure some visitors (& probably future Trump voters) were aghast, but I thought it showed a good faith effort by Americans to face up to their actual past. LBM, notwithstanding its own playful, fable-like elements, had, it seemed clear, been a real sign-post to how the story of the West would in fact be told going forward.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The Last Picture Show then showed what became of The West, 'what it was all for'... and it was pretty depressing. The ennui born of living after not only the end of the frontier west but also the end of the era of legends, promulgated esp. by Hollywood about the frontier state is represented in the film by the titular screening of Red River (1948) that closes down Anarene's old movie house.

It was a very self-conscious final curtain!

Of course, interesting Westerns would continue to be made by Altman, Aldrich, Eastwood, Mel Brooks! But a mainstream genre can't survive on art-films, parodies, and the like.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

After all, if The Western as a big, mainstream, easy-money-making genre *had* a provisional tombstone there's no reason it should occur strictly within a 12-month period.

---

Yes, I suppose in leaping to suggest that 1969 was the "year that the Western ended," I'm inviting a fair amount of refutation. There were certainly Westerns made in the decades following 1969...and I believe we have had Westerns in some manner quite recently here in the second decade of the 21st Century(no less an auteur than QT has used the Western format for his last three movies -- two actual Westerns, and one movie about the MAKING of Westerns.)

That said, I can stand by my thought that 1969 was some sort of "watershed year." To wit:

ONE: 1969 seems to be the ONLY year that a Western(albeit a "hybrid") was actually the highest grossing picture of the year. Those "top ten grossing" lists can be unreliable(I've seen "Psycho" anywhere from 1st to 2nd to 3rd,of 1960, depending on the list) but "Butch Cassidy" was Number One on the three I looked at...so there you go. (But this: Butch Cassidy as a Number One made a lot less than The Godfather, Jaws, or Star Wars as a Number one...everything's relative.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

TWO: John Wayne, a great star and not-half-bad movie actor won his ONLY Best Actor Oscar in 1969 in a movie that was perhaps his last substantial(ie. Top Ten) hit, and a classic story to boot: True Grit. Only Glen Campbell's amateur acting really flaws the film for me, and he's OK a fair amount of the time. True Grit IS a classic film and its very important to the career of the most important Western actor ever. Though some noted that Wayne coulda shoulda been nominated for a number of other great roles: Red River, The Searchers, even Rio Bravo...not to mention his very affecting work in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Plus, AFTER True Grit, Wayne twice delivered Oscar-worthy work: in The Cowboys and in his final film, The Shootist. (Both films were tentatively cast with George C. Scott first, that's how "prestige" they were meant to be. And something happens to Wayne in each of them. Guess.)

Still..Rooster Cogburn was a great part -- with some great long Oscar-bait speeches(a true test of acting prowess) and its more than representative of Wayne's strengths as an actor. It was seen as a "final swan song" at the time --Wayne wasn't thought to be OK for the 70's...but surprise...he made 11 more movies before death!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

THREE: The Wild Bunch. Made from the same historic source materials as Butch Cassidy, The Wild Bunch was much better liked by most critics than Butch Cassidy was. Though boy was it hated by some, too(Judith Crist going on the Carson show to say "bring your barf bags for The Wild Bunch.") I recall The Wild Bunch as such a BIG surprise. Fading stars like William Holden and Ernest Borgnine were always making Westerns, it seemed, to keep a steady paycheck rolling in -- nobody EXPECTED anything from The Wild Bunch.

And we got: an ultra-gory bloodbath that immediately joined Psycho(in the thriller category) and Bonnie and Clyde(in the gangster category) as "shocking." Prior to The Wild Bunch, most victims of gunshots did NOT bleed, they grabbed their stomachs and keeled over. In retrospect, the somewhat bloody gunfights in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Hombre(1967) showed a certain timidity on the subject: "OK, that guy can bleed...but that guy can't...just paint a little red spot on his chest..." In The Wild Bunch, blood spurted out of the front of the victims AND out their backs(the bullets went through) and the sheer technical cost of rigging up scores of men to so bleed was ...astonishing.

Once folks got past the blood in The Wild Bunch, they saw the cinematic wizardry of the thing. In the two big gunfights than open and close the film, we realize that a lot of victims do NOT bleed -- the "bleeders" are intercut with men who do not bleed, but the action is cut so fast and furious(with slow motion mixed with other speeds) that it SEEMS like everybody is bleeding. The Wild Bunch, like Psycho(but NOT like Bonnie and Clyde) proved to be a demonstration of "cinema" as much as a narrative story. Peckinpah was definitely quoting Hitchcock -- and not Ford - in his hyper-edited montages of action and bloodshed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And once folks got past the blood and the cinema of The Wild Bunch they saw...something surprisingly moving. A tale of late middle-aged men -- MEAN and MURDEROUS middle-aged men -- who finally came to the end of their line and voluntarily -- suicidally -- decided to go out in a blaze of glory, for a worthy cause. For men of all ages, The Wild Bunch was a bittersweet tale of sacrifice("Let's go" "Why not?")

I'll play my card here: not only is The Wild Bunch my favorite Western of all time -- its my third favorite MOVIE of all time. And there it was in 1969, even as Butch Cassidy and True Grit were higher grossers and bigger deals at the Oscars.

FOUR: Once Upon a Time in the West. Sergio Leone is famous for his three Clint Eastwood Westerns most of all, and The Good The Bad and The Ugly among those three. But it has sure felt, over the decades. like Once Upon a Time in the West has crept up and past them as a classic. And with no Clint. Not to mention: Leone would call a later gangster picture "Once Upon a Time in America" and QT would call an unrelated movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." So...the TITLE has lived on.

On the "Top grossers of 1969" lists I consulted, OATITW came in pretty low -- 24 th (doing LESS well than Alfred Hitchcock's "flop" Topaz in the same year. 22nd. Hmm...I guess Hitch did better than we thought that year.)

Once Upon a Time in the West got a lot of ABC network showings in the 70's and branched out to cable and VHS and DVD and got its cult. In my personal life, I had a friend who considered Once Upon a Time in the West to be his favorite film. He cast me and him in an 8mm 10 minute Western based on it...and scored our little film to the Once Upon a Time in the West soundtrack...which I now know by heart(in that film, I get shot and killed to that score.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

So there are four noteworthy Westerns in one year -- all four considered classics one way or another. And this: I looked around and I couldn't find a Western getting the number one gross of the year in ANY year other than 1969. 1953 came close, with High Noon at Number Three and Shane not too far behind it.

Unforgiven in 1992 did something that Butch Cassidy could not do: it won the Best Picture Oscar. But it was at Number 19 on the grosses list (Batman Returns was Number One that year.) Movies like The Searchers and Rio Bravo seemed to land in the Top Ten, but not many others.)

Backing up to "the 1960s" in general -- the years BEFORE 1969 -- one finds a lot of mediocre Westerns being made, as one critic said "to provide aging male stars with paychecks." Glenn Ford had been a Number One star in the 50's; in the 60's he made a lot of low budget, lousy Westerns. More often than not , TWO aging male stars were put in a Western, to make it marketable. In 1967, we got this roundelay:
John Wayne and Kirk Douglas in The War Wagon; John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in El Dorado, and Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in The Way West(with fading Richard Widmark thrown in.)

Sergio's spaghetti Westerns made a splash in the 60's, as did Paul Newman's all-star downer "Hombre." And in 1966, a big budget Western adventure called The Professionals made the Top Ten. It starred aging star Burt Lancaster...but he was paired with hot new star Lee Marvin and THIS one felt like a "big movie"(the director was the prestigious Richard Brooks.)

The 60's ended up being rather a "split decision" for Westerns. Most of them were time-fillers and programmers -- just like the action cop movies that would follow them. But quality movies like The Magnificent Seven, The Professionals, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance popped through, too. And in 1969, total respect was given.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

If 1969 had rather "saluted" the Western with its four major films(of varying success), it is indeed not like the 70's just quit them.

Clint Eastwood made:

Two Mules for Sister Sara 1970
Joe Kidd 1972
High Plains Drifter 1973 (R-rated, with Cilnt raping a woman and killing men with extreme violence)
The Outlaw Josey Wales(considered a classic by some; a bit too perfunctory and small scale, for me.)

John Wayne made:

The Undefeated(1969, the same year as True Grit, with Rock Hudson along for that fading star pair thing)
Chisum 1970 (Warners' biggest hit of the year OTHER than "Woodstock"; there's a contrast)
Big Jake 1971 (same year as Dirty Harry, some of the same writers as Dirty Harry, with similar speeches to Dirty Harry; Maureen OHara back for old times sake; Wayne's sons in the movie -- and his best villain ever in Richard Boone. A "pop classic" and a solid hit.)
The Cowboys 1972 (A "prestige movie" with a tragic ending for Wayne; Bruce Dern was too rodentoid and greasy to best Richard Boone as a villain...but he was bad enough.)
The Train Robbers (Faded 60's star Rod Taylor buddies up too late with the Duke, but its OK...this is a really BORING Western actioner, with Ben Johnson and Ann-Margret along.)
Cahill, US Marshal (George Kennedy doesn't quite fill Boone's boots as the bad guy; routine.)
Rooster Cogburn 1974 (Wayne sequels his great role with Kate Hepburn; much was made of the pairing but she looked 100 and what made it sadder was that it was a remake of The African Queen.)
The Shootist (VERY lucky for Wayne, he went out in this elegiac, quality Western drama about an old gunfighter dying of cancer; with James Stewart, Richard Boone and Lauren Bacall along for the sad ride.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Of interest: Peter Bogdanovich, hot off of The Last Picture Show and What's Up Doc, wanted to make a fully scripted Western to star John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda(plus Ryan O'Neal and Cybill Shepard.) Stewart said yes, Fonda said yes -- but Wayne said "no." And Warners said: "We won't finance a Western without John Wayne as a guarantee." Oh, well, the tale became "Lonesome Dove" years later: Robert Duvall in for Wayne; Tommy Lee Jones in for Stewart; Robert Urich(?) in for Fonda.

Indeed, if you look at the 70's, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne were single-handedly responsible for about half the Westerns made in that decade -- and most of their movies were minor.

But there were OTHER 70's Westerns. Leone did one more: with James Coburn and Rod Steiger. Raquel Welch and Robert Culp(great) were in the OK Hannie Caulder(with Borgnine, Elam, and Strother Martin as foes.) William Holden and Ernest Borgine re-united -- for nothing(The Revengers.) And "old guys" like Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas kept using the Western as vehicles.

Came the 80's, I recall one particular summer: 1985. Eastwood FINALLY made another Western: Pale Rider. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" scribe Lawrence Kasdan made a "sort of all star" fun Western called "Silverado"(aka The Magnificent Four...and they all live.) Eastwood's typically cheapjack, spare and chintzy Pale Rider beat the big budget Silverado handily, but the two movies together almost felt like a revival.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And how about the 90's? In 1992 Eastwood got a prestige comeback with what looks to be his final Western(Unforgiven.) And the very next year (1993), we got TWO re-dos of the most famous buddy story of all: Wyatt Earp and the bad-good Doc Holliday. While everybody waited for Oscar man Kevin Costner to bring HIS version of Earp (with Dennis Quaid as Holliday)....Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer snuck in as Wyatt and Doc and hit the jackpot (poor Dennis Quaid - -he lost huge weight to play an emaciated Holliday, but Kilmer's wacky version with his great dialogue ruled the day.)

---

All of this is to suggest, of course, that there is no way that 1969 was "the final year of the Western." No, not at all. But in some ways it was the BEST year of the Western(four great ones) , and from 1970 on, the Western wasn't a "usual studio product" but rather a "specialty act" -- Westerns got made only under special circumstances, and usually because of somebody's clout(Eastwood, Wayne...Kasdan, Costner...QT.)

Keep in mind that in the late 50s and early 60's, it wasn't so much movies where the Westerns ruled -- it was TV, with scores of Westerns, a few in the Top Ten(Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and the more action-packed Have Gun Will Travel.) The TV Western glut shrank first(though Gunsmoke and Bonanza soldiered on for years). The movie Westerns soon followed.

Keep in mind that "urban critics" like Pauline Kael ranted against Westerns, wanted them gone, wanted JOHN WAYNE gone. We're told that Westerns aren't good date movies(unless they are Butch Cassidy)and that women won't go. In certain ways, its amazing that Westerns still DO get made, sometimes. So many Hollywood people seem to be against them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

swanstep wrote:

So... I'm *very* inclined to complete your picture of the End of The Western, centered on but not exhausted by 1968/9, by adding two elegaic films from late in 1970: Little Big Man & The Last Picture Show, and perhaps by setting up the whole bonfire with reference to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

---

ecarle replies:

Three good offerings -- for three different reasons.

---

TMWSLV's key line "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" sounded world-wise & cool & cynical at the time but by 1969-1970 it looked like an unhappy & unstable half-way house.

--

I read somewhere the other day that TMWSLV is "John Ford's most famous film," and if so...what irony. Stagecoach, his Cavalry trilogy , The Searchers. Not to mention all of Ford's NON-Western greats like The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man. BUT: Liberty Valance was "recent and modern" (1962, hah.) It has John Wayne being GREAT -- here is the first Wayne/James Stewart pairing and Wayne wipes the screen with Stewart and his wimpiness; it has Lee Marvin(villainy personified and psycho and young and virile). And it has one of the greatest premises of all time: exactly who The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is...changes everything.

Still, Liberty Valance is a cheap soundstage job; Ford seems distracted and his stars (except Marvin) seem too old for their parts. Nonetheless: the plot and "that line" have lasted forever as great.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The sort of accommodation with the past TMWSLV argued for was, at least in all developed countries, swiftly found to be impossible to maintain. No, the truths about ethnocentrism & racism & genocide & exploitation that framed the West were going to come out & modern folk were going to have to learn to live in the light of their *real* past.

---

Well, as the 70's came, Hollywood started its "big turn left." You could SEE it at the Oscar shows, as folks like Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty rather politely and patiently waited for Wayne and Stewart to..retire and die off. Bob Hope, too. And even "neutral" non-conservative movies stars like Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis were shipped off to TV. The new generation was going to make movies THEIR way, with THEIR viewpoint.

Aging rebel Brando famously sent a "Native American woman" to pick up his Godfather Oscar. It looked like a naïve stunt at the time(and it still is; she was Hispanic!) but...Marlon saw the future coming.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

LBM is sometimes derided as the first 'woke' western, but its core point was sound: that all serious stories of the West going forward were, at a minimum, going to have to include indigenous voices & perspectives & just generally face a test of truth (no more agreed upon, convenient legends!).

---

I guess so. It was a film that came out early in 1970 and got a critic's tag line "The First Great Movie of the 70's." The director was Arthur Penn(Bonnie and Clyde) and it paired stars from the two landmark films of 1967: Faye Dunaway(Bonnie and Clyde) and Dustin Hoffman(The Graduate.) Though Hoffman was the central star here; Dunaway was a cameo.

What's funny is: Little Big Man never really got mentioned as one of the great movies of the 70's by the time the 70's were over. It never really made the list where you'd find Patton and MASH and The French Connection and A Clockwork Orange, and The Godfather and Cabaret...and The Exorcist, American Graffifi, Chinatown...hell, that's only HALF the 70s.

I suppose in retrospect maybe LBM was a little TOO woke, and Hoffman was a little TOO mannered. The film was borderline arty(Penn had been reading his auteur reviews.) The film didn't play like a Western(except for one short scene where Hoffman tried to be a gunslinger -- vs. Jeff Corey, the Sheriff from Butch Cassidy.)

Native American Chief Dan George was the "hit" of the movie -- but even he lost his Supporting Actor Oscar bid to ...John Mills as a deaf-mute(it figures) in Ryan's Daughter.
(He was rather too much "specialty casting" to work a lot, but George returned to great effect in Clint Eastwood's Josey Wales -- SIX YEARS later!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I remember really liking Little Big Man. You had the Great Martin Balsam doing a hilarious yet gruesome running gag bit as a medicine con man who loses body parts throughout the film to angry townspeople, ending the film on a crutch with a peg leg, and eyepatch, a tin nose, and an ear missing!

The film's "new look" at Little Big Horn perhaps muddied the waters. Hollywood had turned left, but the Western audience was still significantly right. In the final analysis, Little Big Man was pitched for Oscars, not for big grosses.

And I STILL don't know why it isn't mentioned so much with "the great films of the 70''s."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

When I visited the Little Big Horn battlefield/National Monument back in 1998 it was a little startling to see/hear all the talk there of ethnocentricism & genocidal racism. It was confronting & I'm sure some visitors (& probably future Trump voters) were aghast, but I thought it showed a good faith effort by Americans to face up to their actual past. LBM, notwithstanding its own playful, fable-like elements, had, it seemed clear, been a real sign-post to how the story of the West would in fact be told going forward.

--
Yes ...but...the "entertainment value" of the Western would pretty much fade away as historical realism became the order of the day. Brando was validated-- henceforth, the Native Americans would no longer be the "enemy hordes." THAT kind of Western was over. (As were the embarrassing "drunken Indian" characters in The Rat Pack's "Sergeants Three" and "The Hallelujah Trail.")

The OTHER kind of Western(white good guys versus white bad guys -- see: Rio Bravo; Silverado) faded out to a specialty act.

Speaking of Native American's : Robert Aldrich's 1972 "Ulzana's Raid" was a hard-R Western in which white men shot their women in the head to avert their rape by Indian warriors, and in which the afore-mentioned Indian warriors did stuff like cutting out the heart of their white victims and playing catch with it. The Americans in the piece were bad in their way, but Aldrich and his writer seemed intent on suggesting that "war is hell" under any circumstances and the whites didn't have a monopoly on savagery.

Old guy Burt Lancaster(as a Scout who understands both sides) anchored the tale -- which made not a dime but seems to have a cult. (The film was shipped out with Hitchcock's hard-R "Frenzy" as a sort of "double bill of auteur depravity.")

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Last Picture Show then showed what became of The West, 'what it was all for'... and it was pretty depressing.

--

Such a big hit for Peter Bogdanovich -- maybe more with the critics than at the box office, but it made money. Black and white was daring in 1971.

I always felt that Bogdo "leavened" the grim depression of the tale with a continual serving of nudity and sex. One of the themes of the film -- set in 1951 -- was that all these bored people in their dead-end town could rely only upon sexual intercourse as solace. For the "kids" it was a hormonal driving force, for the adults, a last-chance for some sort of ...pleasure.

---

The ennui born of living after not only the end of the frontier west but also the end of the era of legends, promulgated esp. by Hollywood about the frontier state is represented in the film by the titular screening of Red River (1948) that closes down Anarene's old movie house.

It was a very self-conscious final curtain!

--

I understand that in Larry McMurtry's novel, that last picture show is NOT Red River. Bogdo was saluting his friend Howard Hawks and at the same time dropping that curtain. I myself have some memories of seeing some movies in small "mom and pop theaters"(no multiplexes) where there WAS an air of sadness to watching a movie with only a few customers in a rattletrap theater. One by one, they ALL closed down. But that was well after 1951.

Also: Larry McMurtry is the one who wrote that script to star Wayne, Stewart, and Fonda...that become Lonesome Dove.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Of course, interesting Westerns would continue to be made by Altman, Aldrich, Eastwood, Mel Brooks! But a mainstream genre can't survive on art-films, parodies, and the like.

--

No. Westerns have been made in all the years since 1969...but far fewer than were made BEFORE 1969. They are almost always "specialty" numbers.

The "top grossers" of 1974 seem to have veered between two movies: The Towering Inferno(Newman, McQueen and disaster) and...Blazing Saddles. That was a surprise to me.

I saw it at a Sneak Preview in Hollywood -- with Mel Brooks and the cast in attendance -- and I thought it was sort of like a "dirty Carol Burnett episode."(After all, Harvey Korman was in it.) Much to my surprise, it was a big hit that lasted through much of 1974..up until Xmas, when ANOTHER Mel Brooks hit came out: Young Frankenstein. THAT was Mel Brooks' year.

"Blazing Saddles" with its Black humor("pro") and its Gay humor("con") is being threatened as a "cancel culture victim." About that I can say...nothing. Maybe yes, maybe no. Nothing lasts forever.

The Altman was "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," yes? A Western set largely in the snow, with Warren Beatty rather hogging the screen and mumbling. McCabe is a perfect companion piece to Altman's MASH and The Long Goodbye in its shambling, ambling improvisational air but somehow...that works less well for a Western than for a private eye movie or a war comedy. Its not a favorite of mine.

And let's not forget "The Missouri Breaks" in which, somehow(and right after winning his Cuckoo's Nest Oscar), Jack Nicholson comes off as BORING versus a slumming and wacky "guest" performance by Brando. Director? Arthur Penn(Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man.)

[–] ccr1633 (1523) 4 years ago

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I STILL don't know why it [LBM] isn't mentioned so much with "the great films of the 70''s."

Surely part of LBM's 'problem' is just that competition is so fierce in the early '70s. In most official-ish rankings, e.g.:
http://films101.com/yd197r.htm
LBM comes out as something like the 10th best film of 1970 and the 50th best film of the whole 1970s [It gets about the same 4.5 star ratings as Frenzy, The Long Goodbye, Eraserhead, A Woman Under The Influence.]
That is, people mostly agree that LBM's a fascinating film but not a complete success/triumph, e.g. 1, not all the humor lands, e.g. 2, there's always been a bit of JFK-like queasiness about LBM's uproarious portrayal of Custer. (They could have pulled back that portayal by about 10% and hewed close to the military facts but, like Oliver Stone, the book's author and director Penn are in the counter-myth business...).

In general, too, films that mix dramatic and comic tones, see also O Lucky Man (1973), tend to be a little underrated I think. They often have trouble finding an audience period, but even when they do connect (often first with a hipster crowd) people still don't take them as seriously as the latest tragic grim-fest. LBM probably seemed hip in 1970 but not as *importantly so* as Last Picture Show or Five Easy Pieces or Husbands.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One more 70's western for your consideration: The Hired Hand (1971). I saw this only recently and was mesmerized by its cinematography, spare dialog, and restrained psychedelic vibe. It was directed surprisingly well by Peter Fonda, fresh off his glorious Easy Rider success, and co-stars the always reliable Warren Oates and whoever played the nutty leader of the snake charmers in Vanishing Point. Free the vipers!

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That's a good one -- the villain was quite interesting, he seemed a bit too "wimpy" to be so dangerous, but he was. And the story had the classic elements of "friendship versus love."

I suppose with Butch Cassidy scoring as the biggest hit of 1969, and with True Grit hitting so big, and with The Wild Bunch creating a cult following for a very BIG movie...perhaps the suits started green-lighting Westerns at a good rate again.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I STILL don't know why it [LBM] isn't mentioned so much with "the great films of the 70''s."
Surely part of LBM's 'problem' is just that competition is so fierce in the early '70s. In most official-ish rankings, e.g.:
http://films101.com/yd197r.htm
LBM comes out as something like the 10th best film of 1970 and the 50th best film of the whole 1970s

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Yes. I think what I remember is two things (1) I was finally of an age where I understood how "a decade changes" and I was excited to see what the 70's would bring at the movies and (2) I read that review blurb that called "Little Big Man" the first great movie of the 70s. That ad line followed me through the 70's as a memory and I recall slowly noting that no, Little Big Man simply didn't get the ink of The Godfather or Chinatown(to name two.)

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[It gets about the same 4.5 star ratings as Frenzy, The Long Goodbye, Eraserhead, A Woman Under The Influence.]

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Not bad company but no -- those didn't end up looking like "the best of the 70's" either. Frenzy got all those great reviews and on all those 10 Best Lists, but seemed forgotten at the end of the 70's. Hitchcock wasn't seen as a filmmaker OF the 70's. The Long Goodbye has had a bigger cult following, but is actually a much slighter, less cinematically impressive film than Frenzy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

That is, people mostly agree that LBM's a fascinating film but not a complete success/triumph, e.g. 1, not all the humor lands, e.g. 2, there's always been a bit of JFK-like queasiness about LBM's uproarious portrayal of Custer. (They could have pulled back that portayal by about 10% and hewed close to the military facts but, like Oliver Stone, the book's author and director Penn are in the counter-myth business...).

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Yes. There was a "counter-vailing" historical argument to what's said and shown in Little Big Man, at least in the details. In retrospect, the film was on the one hand too "arty" to be an entertainment classic(like The Godfather) and too commercial to feel like an art film. Following the source novel, I guess, Little Big Man plays very weird and eccentric a lot of the time(like with the Balsam character.)

Seeing "Little Big Man" as a teenager I do recall it as having some sexual content that uh..intrigued me ...at that age. A scene in which one after the other Native American women request(by clearing their throats) that Hoffman service each and every one of them at night in a teepee was...a nice fantasy? And Faye Dunaway's role was quite sexualized. The "sex angle" of Little Big Man reflected the coming of the 70's at the movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In general, too, films that mix dramatic and comic tones, see also O Lucky Man (1973), tend to be a little underrated I think. They often have trouble finding an audience period, but even when they do connect (often first with a hipster crowd) people still don't take them as seriously as the latest tragic grim-fest. LBM probably seemed hip in 1970 but not as *importantly so* as Last Picture Show or Five Easy Pieces or Husbands.

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You have just mentioned a group of films that I READ about in the 70's with interest. I saw about half of them. Still the memory of those films -- seen and unseen -- powers a different time in American films, that's for sure.

What WERE the great films of the 70's? I guess you have that list of 50 films, but off the top of my head -- and mainstream only -- I'd offer:

Patton
MASH
Airport(not a good movie, but a huge hit)
Dirty Harry
The French Connection
A Clockwork Orange
The Godfather
Cabaret
Deliverance
The Poseidon Adventure(like Airport)
American Graffiti
The Exorcist
The Sting
Godfather II
The Conversation
Chinatown
Jaws
Cuckoo's Nest
Network
Taxi Driver
Rocky(as entertainment)
Star Wars
Close Encounters
Annie Hall
Saturday Night Fever
The Deer Hunter
Grease
Animal House
Apocalypse Now
Alien

---That's mainly "entertainments" but it would seem to include the movies that were more memorable than Little Big Man either as "serious films" or hits.

[–] BourbonKing (5777) 4 years ago

I wasn't old enough to view it upon its initial release, not until sometime in the late 70s and actually studied it in my highschool Film & TV class where we read up on its supposed everlasting influence. Upon my second viewing in school I can remember not being that impressed by it, even though my teacher pointed out that Goldman's script was considered the gold standard for movie screenwriting. I was particularly annoyed with the "Raindrops keep falling on my Head" sequence and in later years I figured that the director and producers were aiming for the asynchronous musical cues of Sergio Leone's westerns but then I later abandoned that notion.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I wasn't old enough to view it upon its initial release, not until sometime in the late 70s and actually studied it in my highschool Film & TV class where we read up on its supposed everlasting influence.

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I suppose a key part of that everlasting influence was its re-creation of "the buddy movie." We'd had Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy back in the day, and already a few versions of the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holiday friendship(My Darling Clementine, Gunfight at the OK Corrall), but Butch Cassidy seemed to open the floodgates on male buddy movies in the 70's. Some critics at the time -- especially female critics -- groused that all these "male couple movies" were shutting women out of romantic roles with men. There were half-hearted attempts to suggest that these male couple were gay. Maybe some of them, beneath the surface, but the bigger more aggravating message to women was this: these hetereo men would rather hang with each other than with women (though in many of these movies, female hookers filled other needs....including in Butch, where Butch sees a hooker.)

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Upon my second viewing in school I can remember not being that impressed by it,

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Here is a movie that had a huge reputation as a hit AT THE TIME, but with each passing year, it seemed to have less and less resonance. SPOILER: Even though the men get killed at the end...the film felt oddly lightweight. Maybe the Bacharach score?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

even though my teacher pointed out that Goldman's script was considered the gold standard for movie screenwriting.

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Here's what I recall. There were a lot of articles about how this ORIGINAL screenplay(not from a novel or play, like most movies) went for the highest price ever - $400,000 I think -- which made screenwriter William Goldman(a rather handsome man for photos) a "screenwriter superstar" and which gave a lot of young men and woman a new role model: if you couldn't BE Paul Newman, you could WRITE for him and make a million dollars.

Also this: the screenplay of Butch Cassidy went out as a paperback(with Newman and Redford on the cover) and became a bestseller that evidently a lot of "new" screenwriters used as a tool. Simply put, the general public had never SEEN a screenplay before, and to read the Butch Cassidy one was to be "let into the secret" of how those weird-to-read documents look. (EXT. DAY. CLOSE UP...)

Goldman's script also revealed that one way to win an Oscar is to write a script that is funny to read, with such script directions as "we now see Butch deliver the most spectacular kick to the balls in the history of the American Motion Picture" and (about the camera move on the train car with the Superposse: "The camera moves superfast -- Craig Breedlove must be driving this camera(Breedlove was a race car driver of the time.)

The other "greatness" of the Goldman screenplay at the time before it was made is that it was clearly going to attract TWO major stars. The funny thing was, it actually attracted only one: Newman. With McQueen, Beatty and Brando passing or being rejected..Redford became a star.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I was particularly annoyed with the "Raindrops keep falling on my Head" sequence and in later years I figured that the director and producers were aiming for the asynchronous musical cues of Sergio Leone's westerns but then I later abandoned that notion.

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It seemed strange at the time, but Bacharach was everywhere. On the radio, on records , on variety shows. Dionne Warwick sang a lot of his hits(Do You Know the Way To San Jose, I Say a Little Prayer for you) but he popped up elsewhere(The Look of Love in Casino Royale, which also had Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass doing a kickass theme instrumental.) I suppose Bacharach "fit" whatever director George Roy Hill was looking for -- perhaps trying to recreate the romantic whimsy of a French romance like Jules and Jim as much as anything else.

As for Leone...I'm not sure how Morricone may have influenced Butch BEFORE it was made, but AFTER Butch, Leone made "Duck You Sucker" and THAT one has some tunes that sound a bit like Bacharach.

The "cutesie-pie" nature of the Bacharach score(which became a best selling album powered by the best selling Raindrops song) hurt that film with the critics against the grit of The Wild Bunch. But The Wild Bunch had no best selling album or paperback.

[–] BourbonKing (5777) 4 years ago

Yes, but the Morricone music itself in Westerns has all elements of cutesy, melancholic, and zany which itself kind of pulls you out of the era we're suppose to be watching. I just felt that using Bacharach's music was following that idea as well. I agree that you can hear Burt's influence in Duck you Sucker, but most of the music in the 60s and 70s played off each other. I remember thinking as a kid that Herb Alpert was the composer for Sergio Leone's movies and Burt was a member of Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass until I learned that he was the writer of one of his hits but had nothing to do with spaghetti westerns. Discovering music back then was more challenging than today's internet-ready culture

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Yes, but the Morricone music itself in Westerns has all elements of cutesy, melancholic, and zany which itself kind of pulls you out of the era we're suppose to be watching.

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Well, the famous theme for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly rather ended up summarizing "the spaghetti Western" for all time. (Rather like just a few notes of the screeching Psycho score say "slasher movie" a brief bit of the "wooie-wooie-woo-woo-woo-woo" whistle from GBU summons up Clint and spaghetti.)

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I just felt that using Bacharach's music was following that idea as well.

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Good point. After all this was the late sixties, and movies were trying to "get hip" -- zoom lenses, freeze frames, fast cutting -- contrapunctural music.

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I agree that you can hear Burt's influence in Duck you Sucker, but most of the music in the 60s and 70s played off each other. I remember thinking as a kid that Herb Alpert was the composer for Sergio Leone's movies and Burt was a member of Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass

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Wow..THOSE are some interesting connections, but they were all rather of a piece. Herb Alpert did Burt's Casino Royale; Sergio Mendes(whose lead female singer married Herb) did Burt's The Look of Love

-- until I learned that he was the writer of one of his hits but had nothing to do with spaghetti westerns. Discovering music back then was more challenging than today's internet-ready culture

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Absolutely. You had to go to the library, do some research, maybe look at newspaper and magazine articles on microfiche -- to get "in depth." Otherwise, you just had to wait until some TV interviewer "got the goods"

PS. As I write this in July 2020, Ennio Morricone has recently died. A legend.

[–] Jones70 (6534) 4 years ago

Oh yeah all four of those are pretty great but I’d say Once Upon a Time in the West is the best of them.

[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

"BTATSK" is SO a Western!

It's just a very non-traditional one, in theme and tone. Well, in tone, because the theme of encroaching civilization costing the independent frontiersmen their independence goes way back, probably to the days of William S. Hart

[–] BeaSouth (3284) 4 years ago

So true Otter. I first saw this theme in the Kirk Douglas Western, Lonely Are the Brave. The theme you’re talking about was very heavy in that one

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Lonely Are the Brave is a great, small-scale 1962 movie which certainly crystalized the theme of "encroaching civilization costingthe independent frontiersmen their independence." Its "hook" (versus The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy) is that the encroachment is happening in ...1962, not the turn of the 20th Century. There are freeways, cars, trucks and helicopters. (Trains, too -- but those are in Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch.)

"Reversibly," Kirk Douglas' stubbornly independent cowboy HAS managed to "live the life of the Old West" alone by himself on the range(taking itinerant sheepherding jobs and the like) until he brings about his own downfall when he clashes with civilization. The movie has a great score by Jerry Goldsmith that shifts from "mega Western sweep" to sad emotion, and sometimes mixes them. The film has heart and a tearjerking ending(and ANOTHER tearjerking ending earlier in the film when Douglas says goodbye to the woman he could never commit to, Gena Rowlands.) Lonely are the Brave was the favorite Kirk Douglas movie OF Kirk Douglas, of his son Michael Douglas, and, for what it is worth, of me.

I would say that though both films end badly for the anti-heroes, Lonely are the Brave is the more emotional film than Butch Cassidy. And of course, The Wild Bunch, released a few months before Butch Cassidy, takes up the same theme (the times are changing; cars are here) with even fewer tears (none?) and more violence.

But this: the cowboy in Lonely are the Brave is just a cowboy. The protagonists in Butch and The Wild Bunch are criminals, robbers in both cases and MURDEROUS robbers in The Wild Bunch. Makes a difference.

I'm still not quite ready to abandon my stance that Butch Cassidy isn't really a Western. The emphasis on comedy and one-liners, on the "buddy movie" set-ups, and without the conflict that a Western usually sets up ("the good guys versus the bad guys" -- but here the bad guys somehow ARE the good guys.)