ma-cortes This exciting Western is a reasonable engaging tale in which a wealthy woman traveling by herself on horseback leaves her husband to take up riding with outlaws who have robbed a safe . At first , after a chance encounter , a beautiful lady called Catherine Crocker (Sarah Miles) recently escaped from her abusive hubby becomes involved with a band of train robbers led by Jay Grobart (Burt Reynolds , this was one of his first romantic love-stories on the screen) and three other men : Dawes (Jack Warden) , Billy Bowen (Bo Hopkins) and an Indian named Charlie Bent (Varela) who have carried out a robbing a train of its Wells Fargo cargo of $100,000 . In their escape from the crime scene they are chased by a motley group of bounty hunters . Jay has the ordinary problems of managing the three bandits , Dawes and Billy in particular who want to rape the attractive lady . In meantime , they are pursued by a posse led by the tough Harvey Lapchance (Lee J. Cobb), including a mining executive , Willard Crocker (George Hamilton) who results to be Catherine's husband . But the go-riding gets harder , as the bunch fall out among themselves and things go worse . The plot is plain and simple , a dangerous gang on the lam are forced out of circumstance to take along an elegant lady -who holds a dark secret- , against her will , as she , like them , is running away ; while she is harassed and finally falls in love with the main star . As the picture reveals itself to be a romance and a throughly love story . The phrase "Cat Dancing" of the film and source novel's title refers to the name of the first wife of this movie's central character Jay performed by Burt Reynolds . It's a love on the run in which the protagonists , Jay/Burt and Catherine/Sarah , along the journey learn more about what is under the surface , and both of whom start to fall for each other ; as their tragic pasts coming close to making us care . Good interpretation all around . Burt Reynolds gives a passable acting as an outlaw on the run after avenging his spouse's murder and who has a posse on his trail . Burt Reynolds and Jack Warden apparently insisted on doing their own stunts for this movie . That's why the production filming was shut-down for a week when the movie's star Burt Reynolds was injured on the set from a stunt fight with Jack Warden . This movie is one of a number of screen westerns that Burt Reynolds made during the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s , these movie westerns include Navajo Joe (1966) ; 100 rifles (1969) ; Sam Whisky (1969) and this one . Sarah Miles is acceptable as Catherine Crocker , she was only cast in the lead role just a short time before production started shooting . Support cast is pretty good , such as : the good-looking George Hamilton as Willard Crocker , Lee J . Cobb as Harvey Lapchance , the investigator for Wells Fargo who has a posse of men on their command . Furthermore , Bo Hopkins , Robert Donner , Nancy Malone and Jay Silverheels who played several times the Indian role . Michel Legrand was originally hired to compose the musical score for the film but studio executives informed him that his score was not what they felt the film needed and that he was being dismissed, being replaced by the great John Williams . It packs a colorful and evocative cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr. The motion picture was professionally directed by Richard C Sarafian , though Steven Spielberg William Norton and Brian G. Hutton both declined offers to direct this movie , as Sarafian became this movie's director after the original director left the project . Sarafian was a good craftsman . While employed as a reporter in Kansas City , he met the director, Robert Altman, who hired Sarafian as his assistant. Sarafian has a fruitful career making TV episodes and films and directing a classic iconic movie : Vanishing Point¨ (1971) , as his car chase sequence served as inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007) . Richard portrayed two real-life Mafia figures: Jack Dragna in ¨Bugsy¨ (1991) and Paul Castellano in ¨Gotti¨ (1996). And directed a lot of dramas and thrillers as ¨Gangster Wars¨ , ¨The next man¨, ¨Solar Crisis¨, ¨Run Wild , Run Free¨, ¨Terror at Black falls¨, ¨Fragment of Fear¨ , ¨Street Justice¨ and ¨Eye of the tiger¨

bkoganbing The most romantic Burt Reynolds I've ever seen is the Burt that heads the cast of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. He's also dangerous and deadly when he has to be.Reynolds like James Garner is usually comic and cynical in his best remembered films. But in this one he becomes quite the romantic hero, almost like out of a romance novel especially to the object of his affection Sarah Miles.Burt heads an outlaw gang that consists of Bo Hopkins, Jack Warden, and Jay Varela and one fine day while they're robbing a train Sarah Miles crosses their path. She's running away from her husband George Hamilton, her rich husband who's paying a lot of good wages for a personal posse. Caught in the middle of all this is Wells Fargo man Lee J. Cobb.Reynolds and Miles make such a great romantic couple rarely seen in westerns. Jimmy Stewart and Debra Paget in Broken Arrow come closest to mind, but Stewart was an unabashed hero, not like Reynolds the outlaw.The title refers to the name of Reynolds's Shoshone wife Cat Dancing who died years earlier. That story is essential to understanding how Reynolds's character developed as it did. Miles is a woman who finds true love, but also gets a lot of romantic notions knocked out of a silly head.For fans of westerns and romance.

classicsoncall I always liked Burt Reynolds, but have generally seen him in self effacing roles that allow his humorous and devilish side come through; that's probably why "The Longest Yard" is my favorite Reynolds film. I think he handles his movie Western roles well enough, but it's not the genre I prefer seeing him in. In "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing", Reynolds' character is a driven man on the trail to retrieve his two children from a Shoshone tribe, left behind we come to learn, after he killed the man who raped his wife, the 'Cat Dancing' character of the film's title. That he also killed his Indian bride in a jealous rage is a point that seems to be glossed over in the story, and doesn't square with the sense of honor and justice that Indian tribes maintain for their own personal conduct. I was left wondering why Jay Wesley Grobard (Reynolds) was even allowed to return to the Shoshone camp, and once there, why he wasn't called on to atone for his past. In fact, Grobard wasn't even an honorable character at the start of the movie, but a train robber who's gang is disrupted by the intrusion of a woman on the run from her husband. The story's twist is that her own name is Catherine/Cat, thereby completing the connection with the title character.Of course, Catherine's (Sarah Miles) husband hires on a tracker (Lee J. Cobb) to find his wife who he believes is kidnapped. You never get the impression that Crocker (George Hamilton) isn't a decent enough guy in his own right, only that his wife doesn't love him enough to want to stay married. With Grobard's gang, Catherine gets more than she's bargained for, having to fend off the lecherous likes of Bo Hopkins' Billy, and Jack Warden's Dawes. Dawes in particular turns out to be the vile snake of the bunch, just check how many kidney shots he gives to old Billy Boy. Reflecting back on that now, the arrival of Catherine turns out to be the undoing of just about everyone in the picture.It was cool to see Jay Silverheels in one of his last movie roles, but gee, they went kind of heavy on the old warrior makeup to portray him as Shoshone Chief Washaki. The Chief had one of the better lines in the picture as he parleyed with Grobard - "The cigar was one of the white man's good ideas" - an interesting observation. But probably the best was Billy's description of Catherine after she cleaned herself up on the trail - "Well, if she don't look as fresh as a daisy next to an outhouse"! What wonderful imagery.

wildwiltedrose will this ever be put out on DVD? Burt Reynolds best movie. Burt was so good looking in this movie. I love him as a cowboy. I have this on VHS and I would love to have it on DVD. They don't make many good westerns anymore. I wish they did. Burt was so good in this movie. I even love where its filmed looks rugged and so old west. Even the old mining town looks just like a very old mining town. The horse Sarah Miles rides such a pretty horse. She should have took more riding lessons before the movie and couldn't they have let her just ride instead of riding on the side like a girl. Burt riding his horse up in the snow till he breaks his leg is hard to watch that part.