One of six films that star Robert Redford and Director Sydney Pollack worked on together, 1972's JEREMIAH JOHNSON is dated, but entertaining.
Redford holds the screen every moment as former army officer Johnson, who decides he's had enough of "flat land" and he wants to be a mountain man. The film's first twenty minutes finds him learning the hard way that winter in the Rockies may be beautiful, but its far from easy.
Like "The Revenant" but with much more humor than could be found in that film, Jeremiah learns his way around survival and the film falls into several different sections.
The first has him meeting grizzled, old & slightly crazy, Bear Claw, played by Will Geer (The Waltons). A weathered white trapper, he's got plenty of wisdom and sage advice to dole out.
Johnson then comes across a tragic woman whose lost two children to an Indian attack. Near madness, she forces her sole remaining child to accompany Johnson on his journey.
Johnson meets an Indian tribe led by Paints His Red Shirt (well played by Joaquin Martinez) who sends his daughter Swan (Delle Bolton) to be Johnson's wife.
The adventures are episodic, occasionally humorous, sometimes violent & moving.
Redford is in pure movie star form as the quiet mountain man, often carrying long passages without dialogue befitting his quiet character.
Director Pollack would go on to make "The Way We Were", "Three Days of the Condor", "The Electric Horseman", "Out of Africa" and "Havana" with Redford. That's one hell of a lineup.
This is one of the more eclectic films in the pack. It's voice-over third party narration and folk-like songs that interrupt the action don't hold up very well, but the photography by Duke Callaghan (Conan the Barbarian) is very good and the cast is all terrific.
Slow but entertaining, JEREMIAH JOHNSON broke the mold of a traditional western in the early seventies, provides a pattern for "Dances with Wolves" many years later and gets a B-.
Comments