"Jeremiah Johnson" may only run two hours, yet the video version I have actually stops midway through for a musical entr'acte. It sort of feels right. In patience if not true time, this is one of the longest movies I ever sat through.
Robert Redford is Jeremiah, a Mexican War veteran who has clearly had enough of civilization and wants to strike out for land where no white man has been. In the course of his travels, he meets a colorful grizzly-bear hunter (Will Geer), a scalp trader (Stefan Gierasch), a Flathead woman (Delle Bolton) and a boy (Josh Albee). None really are around very long, as Jeremiah's loneliness and individualism is pretty much the theme of the picture.
A film that feels very much of its time, with a folksy singer playing a guitar while a camera pans over miles of snow-covered mountains, "Jeremiah Johnson" has a rugged authenticity that commands respect, without ever spilling over into Granola-hippie platitudes. With John Milius co-writing the screenplay, there's no chance the film will stoop at the conventional political pieties of its day (or ours). Indians massacre whites, whites shoot animals for fur, a sign over the door of a trading post says "White men only," and no one questions why.
But the problem with the film is that it is a trial to watch through its slow but meritable first half, then loses its bearings to become a different, quicker, but dumber movie, a revenge story with the once-peaceable Jeremiah becoming "Crow-killer." I understood the transformation, but it feels somehow wrong, with a series of sudden battles between JJ and individual Crow warriors ("Lucky they were Crow. Apache would have sent 50 at once," the scalp trader tells him) and a final scene so abrupt it appears the producers ran out of money.
It's a one-man film, and Redford shows he can be interesting company. I'm not totally sold on his frontier authenticity, I know in real life the man is a big fan of the Great Outdoors, but he looks like Barry Gibb in buckskin with his big old beard. Still, he inhabits the small scenes well, like the one where he lights a fire or tries to teach his new Indian bride to say "Yes" or tries to take his legacy from the cold, dead hands of Hatchet Jack.
At times a good film, at times a dull one, "Jeremiah Johnson" showcases the spirit of western migration. Actually, one of the things Westerners would say was the toughest thing to face was not the hard winters or Indian attacks, but the boredom. Maybe "Jeremiah" is too authentic that way.
Robert Redford is Jeremiah, a Mexican War veteran who has clearly had enough of civilization and wants to strike out for land where no white man has been. In the course of his travels, he meets a colorful grizzly-bear hunter (Will Geer), a scalp trader (Stefan Gierasch), a Flathead woman (Delle Bolton) and a boy (Josh Albee). None really are around very long, as Jeremiah's loneliness and individualism is pretty much the theme of the picture.
A film that feels very much of its time, with a folksy singer playing a guitar while a camera pans over miles of snow-covered mountains, "Jeremiah Johnson" has a rugged authenticity that commands respect, without ever spilling over into Granola-hippie platitudes. With John Milius co-writing the screenplay, there's no chance the film will stoop at the conventional political pieties of its day (or ours). Indians massacre whites, whites shoot animals for fur, a sign over the door of a trading post says "White men only," and no one questions why.
But the problem with the film is that it is a trial to watch through its slow but meritable first half, then loses its bearings to become a different, quicker, but dumber movie, a revenge story with the once-peaceable Jeremiah becoming "Crow-killer." I understood the transformation, but it feels somehow wrong, with a series of sudden battles between JJ and individual Crow warriors ("Lucky they were Crow. Apache would have sent 50 at once," the scalp trader tells him) and a final scene so abrupt it appears the producers ran out of money.
It's a one-man film, and Redford shows he can be interesting company. I'm not totally sold on his frontier authenticity, I know in real life the man is a big fan of the Great Outdoors, but he looks like Barry Gibb in buckskin with his big old beard. Still, he inhabits the small scenes well, like the one where he lights a fire or tries to teach his new Indian bride to say "Yes" or tries to take his legacy from the cold, dead hands of Hatchet Jack.
At times a good film, at times a dull one, "Jeremiah Johnson" showcases the spirit of western migration. Actually, one of the things Westerners would say was the toughest thing to face was not the hard winters or Indian attacks, but the boredom. Maybe "Jeremiah" is too authentic that way.