Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Two American outlaws escaping to Bolivia at the turn of the century seems like improbable concept for a movie, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is loosely based on the real lives of Robert LeRoy Parker (alias Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (alias the Sundance Kid). The history of this notorious duo is an amalgamation of fact, hearsay, journalistic sensationalism and American Old West mythmaking. What director George Roy Hill offers is a portrait of a powerful friendship that stayed true under the stresses of pursuit by lawmen who wanted them dead or alive, love for the same woman, relocation to a foreign continent, and the impossibility of escaping their past.

Early in the film, Cassidy (played by Paul Newman) explains his plan to Sundance (played by Robert Redford) to go prospecting in mineral-rich Bolivia. Cassidy is the brains of the operation while Sundance is a lightning fast gunslinger. When they return to the Hole in the Wall Gang hideout, a member challenges Cassidy for its leadership. Cassidy boots him in the crotch then appropriates the idea of robbing the Union Pacific Flyer twice, for its owners would refill the train with money not expecting a robbery on the return trip. After a successful hold-up, Cassidy and Sundance gloat on a balcony overlooking the mayor, who is ineffectually trying to rally townsfolk to catch the Gang. We meet Etta, who while being the devoted girlfriend of the gruff and reticent Sundance, has a tender relationship with the affable Cassidy. This is illustrated in a dialogue-free interlude where they ride a bike and monkey about in the countryside to the soundtrack of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

The mood becomes darker and strained when, after they are surprised during the second train robbery by cavalry hired by the railway tycoon, they are forced into a lengthy chase sequence. The Hole in the Wall Gang splits in separate directions, but the pursuers follow Cassidy and Sundance. They are betrayed while hiding out at a brothel and denied amnesty by a friendly sheriff, who tells the pair of their inevitable demise. The posse tracks them through the night and the next day with amazing skill and persistence; the pair determines that among them are the expert Indian tracker Lord Baltimore and notoriously tough lawman Joe Lefors. Cassidy and Sundance are pursued over much terrain before being forced to jump from a cliff and be carried away by the rapids far below. They end up back with Etta and learn that E.H. Harriman, the railway tycoon, put together the outfit to stay on their track until they were killed. At this point they decide to go to Bolivia, and Etta states her intent to go with them, but adds ominously that she wants to be absent when they are finally killed.

The journey is illustrated in a series of sepia photographs. When the trio arrive in their Bolivian destination they are dismayed by its rustic appearance, and Sundance curses Cassidy for his harebrained ideas. They resume their criminal life after Etta gives the men Spanish lessons with “specialized vocabulary” for bank hold-ups. A humorous sequence shows the pair blundering through a robbery with a Spanish crib-sheet, and struggling to recite with Etta phrases such as “This is a robbery. Esto es un robo.” Soon their routine is perfected and they are living decadently, with wanted posters for the “Bandidos Yanquis” showing their notoriety. The honeymoon is over, however, when a potential sighting of Joe Lefors scares Cassidy into wanting to go straight. The men are hired as bodyguards for a humble and eccentric American mine owner, which they fail at when Bolivian bandits kill him. Being forced to kill the bandits shakes Cassidy, who has never killed a man, and the pair decide to return to robbery. Etta, perhaps with a premonition of their demise, leaves the next day. In the town of San Vicente, a boy recognizes a stolen mule and alerts the police to the outlaws. The police descend upon them, starting a climactic shoot-out in which Cassidy and Sundance are seriously wounded due to lack of ammunition. While the bloodied men are recovering strength in an abandoned building, poignantly discussing their next destination of Australia, the Bolivian military gathers outside. When the pair unwittingly exits the building, the camera captures them in a sepia-toned freeze frame to the sound of repeated volleys of rifle fire.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid enthralled the American public, evidenced by being amongst the 100 highest grossing films of all time (adjusted for inflation) and multiple Academy Award accolades. The pathos generated by the close male friendship between the outlaws, who are bound to meet with an untimely death, plus their fetching yet vulnerable female counterpart, largely accounts for the film’s appeal. However, the heroes are also partly conceived as Old West Robin Hoods, an archetype with universal appeal. Partly so because they rob from the rich and keep for themselves. In the United States, the noose of capitalism and modernity tightens around Cassidy, an older cowboy who remembers freer and simpler times; he curses the newly impenetrable banks, the immensely rich and powerful railroad barons, and the bicycle, a modern invention that threatens to replace the horse. He rebels against this by blowing up trains and appropriating easily and ill-gotten wealth, but then is forced to escape to Latin America. In doing so, Cassidy steps multiple decades back in time. Bolivia recalls California in the height of the Gold Rush, when humble but hardworking folk could become rich, not just aristocratic sons who inherit railroads. The charmingly outdated Bolivia is the only apt place for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, symbolic of the romantic frontier spirit outmoded by the modern commercial one, to meet with their inevitable death.

Martyrs of the Alamo

For almost a century filmmakers have been mythologizing the Battle of the Alamo, the site where a handful of Anglo-American Texans stood their ground against the Mexican army in events leading to Texan Independence. Martyrs of the Alamo (1915) is the earliest surviving silent film to depict this event. In this rendition, the heroes are fighting against not only a territorial threat, as the Mexicans aim to oust Texan settlers from San Antonio, but also a moral threat, as the Mexicans are depicted as lecherous toward Anglo-American women.

Martyrs of the Alamo gives two reasons behind the Texas Revolution. Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico, sparked the ire of Texan settlers by introducing an anti-federalist constitution, denying them a state government. On top of this affront to American liberty, the despicable Santa Anna and other Mexicans sexually prey upon the Texan womenfolk. The film takes place in the town of San Antonio, which is overrun by rowdy and obnoxious Mexican soldiers. This grates upon our heroes, including the sharp-witted Silent Smith, noble James Bowie and jovial David Crockett. Prompted by the crack-down on their civil liberties and the moral depravity of the Mexicans, they resolve to band the men together and seize San Antonio while Santa Anna is absent. The Texans overwhelm the Mexican army, and to demonstrate their magnanimity they let the survivors leave San Antonio. The moral order is temporarily restored.

However, their benevolence backfires when Santa Anna hears about this humiliating defeat, and he vows to never rest until Texas is crushed. Meanwhile, Colonel Travis is sent by General Huston, an important Texas Revolution leader, to replace the sick Bowie as garrison leader. Travis delivers his legendary speech in which he demands that the men who will sacrifice their lives for Texas step over a line that he draws in the soil. All men step over, including Bowie being carried on a stretcher. Santa Anna has his troops surround the Alamo and sends a messenger with an ultimatum to surrender. When the messenger returns with a negative response, Santa Anna unleashes the brunt of his army, much superior in terms of soldiers and arms, upon the Alamo. Days of battle ensue in which the Texans show great heroism and sacrifice as they stave off endless waves of Mexican aggressors. Silent Smith exits the Alamo via a secret passageway and rides to General Huston with a plea for reinforcements.

While Huston advances towards the Alamo it is being defeated. Mexicans pour through the cannon-blasted walls, killing everyone in sight including the bed-ridden Bowie. Although the text optimistically states that “before each patriot’s death, many a foe had fallen,” the grim tableaus at the battle’s end show the high Texan casualties. The surviving men are shot (Travis and Crockett are inexplicably absent) and women are sequestered for Santa Anna’s sordid pleasure. As the text tells us, “An inveterate drug fiend, the Dictator of Mexico [is] also famous for his shameful orgies.” The Mexicans let one woman go to inform Huston what happened to the garrison. She finds Huston, tragically close to the Alamo with reinforcements, and he plans to attack the Mexican camp at San Jacinto. Silent Smith infiltrates the camp under the highly implausible guise of a deaf-mute game hunter to observe their activities. Huston launches an attack while the Mexicans are having a siesta and subjugates the camp in less than twenty minutes. Santa Anna, who before the battle began was drugged up in tent-turned-harem of female dancers, is found cowering in the bushes. Huston has Santa Anna, still in a drug-induced stupor, sign a document acknowledging Texas as a free and independent republic.

The Battle of San Jacinto gave birth to the rallying cry “Remember the Alamo!” This phrase, which alludes to a shared memory of grief inflicted by a foreign aggressor and the subsequent triumph of statehood, has become immortalized in American national myth. However, as historian Holly Beachley Brear has noted, the negative role of Mexican-Americans in this myth, projected in numerous Alamo films, makes it highly contestable as a national symbol. For Brear, the Alamo “serves mythologically as a second birthplace for the American,” but as Hispanics are cast as the oppressors, they are excluded from using the Alamo to construct their sense of national pride as other Americans do. The Alamo recalls an extremely violent chapter in Hispanic/Anglo relations as they battled over territory on the frontier. Added to this, Alamo legends often depict this battle as one between two national or racial character types rather than territorial entities.

This is nowhere more apparent than in Martyrs of the Alamo. The primary anxiety in the film is the threat posed to virginal Texan women by rapacious Mexican men. As the audience is informed early on, “Under the dictator’s rule the honor and life of American womanhood was held in contempt.” Women’s bodies often allegorically stand in for territory, and the integrity of both must be protected from invaders. The film continues to depict Mexicans and Americans on the opposite ends of the spectrum morally and temperamentally. For example, the Americans benevolently let enemy soldiers free versus the Mexicans who cruelly shoot their prisoners, or the Americans fight bravely and persistently versus the Mexican troops who are cowardly and dispirited. Myths distill actual events for the relevant elements to tell a good national story, leaving many alternative readings of those events unexplored. The question of how champion of liberty James Bowie can justify owning slaves is just one example of this.

YouTube Link: A brief introduction and the first ten minutes of the film.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Though the bulk of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark is set in Egypt, in its opening shot the trademark Paramount logo fades into the silhouette of an Andean mountain that bears more than a passing resemblance to Huayna Picchu, the peak that towers over the Peruvian archaeological site of Machu Picchu. And in the vignette that establishes Indiana Jones's character and role (and so the three-film series that is to follow), we are firmly in Latin America.


This opening sequence, like the similar openings to Bond films, is at best peripherally related to the film's main plot. The derring-do archaeologist Jones is in search of a golden idol hidden within what appear (judging by the characteristic stonework) to be Inca ruins. He faces innumerable dangers: hostile Indians, the "Hovitos," who seem to have emerged from the Amazon basin along with their blowpipes and poison-tipped darts; a series of arcane booby traps left presumably by the Incas themselves; and finally, a hostile competitor, the Frenchman René Belloq, who later (in the pay of the Nazis) reappears once again as Jones's would-be nemesis, a "shadowy mirror image" of Jones himself.

The film thus sets up a series of mythic archetypes. There is the archaeologist as adventure hero, combining scientific discovery with an unorthodox policing of the past and its legacy. There is Inca civilization itself as a trap-filled labyrinth of almost unrivalled ingenuity, employing its knowledge and expertise to protect itself in the future even long after its own cultural extinction. There is Latin America as an anything-goes playground in the "great game" of inter-war imperial rivalry. And then there is an image of the 1930s as haven of family-friendly boys-own action narratives, providing cartoon escapades as a relief from the tedium of modernity and standardization.

As in Tintin's jaunts through Third World danger zones, the "Indiana Jones" series displaces the conflicts between the great powers of the 1930s onto a periphery (Lima, Katmandu, Cairo) of flying boats and headhunters, mummies and submarines. Technology meets prehistory, the two combining to create the romance and mystique of early twentieth-century modernity.

Somewhat ironically, however, as Cal Meacham notes at some length, the model for this episode in Raiders of the Lost Ark would appear to be neither Tintin nor, say, Flash Gordon, but the rather less than heroic adventures of Donald Duck, as drawn by Carl Barks. Specifically, the referent here consists of two 1950s strips: "The Seven Cities of Cibola" and "The Prize of Pizarro," in which Uncle Scrooge, Donald, and the young Duck nephews search for gold relics and dodge multiple obstacles, including a giant stone ball.


Is more evidence needed that the "ark" that Hollywood repeatedly raids is less the resource that realism could offer than its own pop culture archive of protean, self-generating myth?

As Geoffrey Blum puts it in "Wind from a Dead Galleon":

Raiders was a foregone conclusion the minute Lucas and Spielberg saw Barks' emerald idol--the one false bit of archaeology in an otherwise superbly researched story. For them it didn't matter. That statue crystallized all the thrills of pulp fiction into one shining image which eventually gave birth to three Indiana Jones epics.

Again, then, we see the power of that particular mythic formulation that is Hollywood's Latin America. Though to describe it as mythic is hardly to downplay its potential to induce real effects--as Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's How to Read Donald Duck would be among the first to remind us.

The Gaucho

The original programme notes to The Gaucho, while emphasizing the painstaking research that lies behind the film's script and scenography, state that:

Douglas [Fairbanks] has always held that "things as they are" are never as appealing as "things as we would like to see them."

But what then does this film indicate about what its audience would like to see?

The answer would appear to be: miracles, shrines, macho Argentine country-folk, Lupe Velez's heaving bosom, and the power of religion to redeem even the most inveterate of criminals.

Meanwhile, we would like to see gauchos, if Douglas Fairbanks's portrayal is anything to go by, as raucous, rambunctious folk, who like to drink, dance, and fight, are athletic and a hit with the ladies, and who smoke like a chimney. Fairbanks's cigarette is his constant prop. At one point he swallows it up within his mouth while he pauses to kiss Velez, the mountain girl, only for it to pop out again shortly afterwards.

As always, however, the gauchos are a dying breed. (And it ain't just the lung cancer that'll get 'em.)

Though this film portrays them at their peak, overwhelming Andean villages and evil dictatorial usurpers alike, it also shows the gaucho tamed. Struck by a dreaded lurgy (the "black doom"), a mysterious illness that makes his hand black and numb, Fairbanks's un-named gaucho is about to commit suicide until the saintly girl of the shrine leads him to where Mary Pickford (playing the Virgin Mary) can cure him and turn his life around. Converted to Christianity, he determines to make an honest woman of his lover, Velez, and so presumably an honest, no longer gaucho, man of himself.

The Gaucho was touted for its lavish and expansive sets. The Andes here are near vertical cliffs, within which the people live in no more than caves. The plains, on the other hand, are bedecked with palm trees and throng with cattle for as far as the eye can see.

But who tends these cattle? Hardly anyone here works. Aside from the bartender in the village cantina and the padre at the shrine, the people are divided into three roughly equal parts: beggars, soldiers, and bandits.

This is a story set in some mythical, premodern past. The Latin America presented here is almost entirely a generic image of rural poverty, militaristic tyranny, and popular religiosity, The gaucho bolas, horsemanship, and spurs are the particularistic details around which the shallow characterization is spun. But everything blurs in a haze of cigarette smoke and the dust raised by stampeding cattle.

The Alamo

The point of legends is their adaptability. Freed from the requirements of realism, a legend can be re-invoked for diverse purposes as circumstances demand.

John Lee Hancock's The Alamo is, as Philip French notes, "clearly a post-9/11 movie," whose message, French argues, is that the war it portrays is "a war that should not have been fought, but having engaged with a monstrous enemy, it must be carried on, however reluctantly."

But if we can indeed follow contemporary parallels, then the movie is hardly the "decent, rather half-hearted liberal affair" that French contends.

The story of the Alamo is, in the first place, a story of defeat: the Mexican army's massacre of some 180 defenders holed up in the former mission near San Antonio. In the second place, however, it tells of the power of memory to stir a victorious counter-attack: Sam Houston's subsequent defeat of General Santa Anna at San Jacinto, spurred by the shout "Remember the Alamo!"

And the prime ideological justification for the war against Iraq (especially now that talk of Weapons of Mass Destruction has faded) likewise invokes the memory of trauma to stir resolve against a "monstrous enemy": "Remember 9/11!"

The connection between 9/11 and Iraq is specious, of course, but in so far as The Alamo is indeed a 9/11 allegory, it naturalizes and secures the relation between this trauma and subsequent US bellicosity.

And The Alamo's Santa Anna, played with some panache by Emilio Echeverría, is indeed the very model of a modern tyrant: cowardly and effete, more concerned with pomp and appearance than tactics or efficiency, he callously sacrifices his soldiers and ignores his officers' pleas to respect the rules of war.

For this is the trauma according to Hancock: the fact that Santa Anna plays "dirty" in his assault on the Alamo. (By contrast, for Christy Cabanne's 1915 Martyrs of the Alamo what's at issue is the threat that the Mexicans pose to the honour of Texan womenfolk.) The point, however, is somewhat undermined by the fact that the Alamo's defenders are themselves not the most clean-cut of heroes: Jim Bowie is an unabashed slave-owner, William Travis a dandy with a shady past, and Davy Crockett a troubled character overshadowed by his own mythology.

In the end, though, there is one constant in all the various re-tellings of the Alamo legend: it is a tale about the constitution of an American people.

The mission's defenders are a rag-tag bunch of volunteers and regulars, brought together for a variety of motives, often disreputable. It is only in the face of a foreign aggressor that their internal conflict, essentially between the principle of a citizen militia and the imposition of military hierarchy, is resolved in favour of the state: both the state of Texas and statehood itself.

Ultimately, this is the narrative of how the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers and the New Orleans Greys and other disparate powers come together to defend the idea of a unitary power, which eventually will become the 28th State of the United States of America.