Word: newman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Seventies, unfortunately, owed something else to the movies; it was 2½ hours long. Even a bearded Paul Newman, doing the narration, couldn't still a restless TV soul after the first 90 minutes. Not that this sort of happening shouldn't be encouraged. It should -the nature of the '60s makes just such journalistic examinations not only intriguing but necessary...
Western parodies are nothing new, but this film derives unique strength from the comic gifts of its two stars. Paul Newman is ingratiating as Butch Cassidy, the dubious "brains" of the team. In the past, no matter how hard he has tried, Paul Newman has ended up in Paul Newman roles. He always seems larger and more laconic than life. This time he does better by playing a slightly inept chatterbox, not very tough and not very mean. Aside from his affability and formidable name, Butch Cassidy might have escaped from a Woody Allen monologue. Polite and considerate, he would...
...contrast, glowers like Hud in the role of the Sundance Kid. As a cold-blooded killer, he bears little resemblance to the whining husband of Barefoot in the Park. His moustache droops, for one thing. He grunts, bites bullets, and shoots people (mostly Bolivians) with laughable accuracy. Both Newman and Redford bring sharp comic timing to the title roles, but Sundance is the more remarkable creation. He's chilling and funny at the same time...
...meanwhile become a depressed industry. A railroad baron hires bounty hunters to drive Butch and Sundance out of business. Butch is willing to be bought out, but not rubbed out. So there ensues a lengthy chase sequence through a brothel, across a prairie, and over a cliff. (Asks Newman, "Who are those guys?" A hilarious born loser, that Newman-if only he changed his name to Ziggy and did something about his eves...
...never was as radical as it has been made out to be. For one thing, it is more readily accessible to the casual viewer's sensibility than the austere abstraction of, say, a Barnett Newman or an Ad Reinhardt. Its images, in fact, depend in part on instant recognition. Many of its subjects are the eternal themes of art-scrubbed, rubbed, varnished, stuffed and updated. Susannah and the Elders, an exercise in biblical voyeurism that has been painted by Tintoretto, Rubens and Rembrandt, becomes in Tom Wesselmann's rendition a pink plastic Great American Nude in her bathtub...