Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The classic movie from 1969

I recently took a trip down memory lane and rewatched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid from 1969. I was around eleven or twelve when it was first released. We were living in a small village that had no cinema. The nearest one was a few miles away at the town closet to us. It was a wet Sunday afternoon at nothingville with nothing happening as usual. My sister and a friend of mine decided that we would take a bus into town and go and watch a film. The title meant nothing to me. Neither did Paul Newman nor Robert Redford. Still it was worth a punt. Anything was better than staying where we were for the next few hours.

Because of the bus timetables and the screening of the films, nothing could be properly coordinated. Whenever we went to the cinema, requiring a bus journey, we would arrive halfway through the film. At this time, films in cinemas used to run continuously. And you were never turned out. So if you enjoyed the movie you could watch it again, and again, until it closed for the night. So we would arrive halfway through the film, watch it until the end, and then watch the first half of the film to the point when we first entered. It was a case of putting the two halves together, from back to front. Invariably, by the time we reached the place in the movie where we first entered, we had to leave in order…