Celluloid Heroes

We’re gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal, you’re finished.

It’s interesting to think that 1969 saw two landmark westerns that covered much the same territory in vastly different ways. They were both set against the twilight of the old west and both dealt with train robbers for whom time had fatally passed them by. While Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a breezy, nostalgic comedy, The Wild Bunch is a mostly somber contemplation of violence and mortality.

Sam Peckinpah’s signature film may have been shockingly violent for its day, but its actually fairly tame in that department compared to modern action movies like Die Hard. However, if the graphicness of the violence is not up to modern standards, the sheer body count of this picture, as well as the callous randomness of the death, is still capable of shocking.

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Oh, the Cubans. I love the Cubans. They are so wild!

Topaz plays more like a Masterpiece Theater adaptation of Leon Uris‘ novel than it does an Alfred Hitchcock film. Long, deliberately paced and mostly lacking the dark humor that typified his other movies, Topaz demands patience of its audience. That patience is rewarded with an intelligent, if subdued motion picture experience.

This was not one of Hitchcock’s best received films. Early test screenings were disastrous, leading the director to cut the film significantly for its theatrical release. In addition, new fewer than three different ending were shot. The current DVD, also found in the new Masterpiece Collection box set, contains the uncut version with the second ending, set at the airport.

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If he’d just pay me what he’s paying them to stop me robbing him, I’d stop robbing him.

When you consider just how identified with each other Robert Redford and Paul Newman are, it’s amazing to realize that they have only made two movies together to date. Of course, when they’re both as good as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, I guess it’s not so hard to imagine.

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