BEFORE: Another film that's more or less one of the "Unlinkables". Not many stars in this film, other than Redford - a few character actors, sure, which is always good, but nothing I can really work with. I've already got the outgoing connection planned, though, and it's a pretty sly one.
Today is Earth Day, and I've decided to state that I planned this all along, a nice 2-day tie-in where Redford's character goes out for a long sailing voyage - to get more in touch with nature, of course - and in tonight's film he plays a mountain man, so essentially, that's the same thing, right? A man alone, out in the wilderness, getting in touch with nature. Umm, except for all the hunting and the trapping, that's probably not what Earth Day is all about. Never mind.
THE PLOT: A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians, and proves to be a match for their warriors in one-on-one combat on the early frontier.
AFTER: Yeah, I don't think killing a bunch of Native Americans is really a good representation about what Earth Day is all about. My bad - please consider "All Is Lost" to be more in line with that theme.
This isn't really a "lost" Redford film, according to TCM it was one of the top films of 1972, but you just never hear about it the way you hear people talk about "The Sting" or "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", so it seems to be some sort of sleeper hit. Redford has made nearly as many films as Cary Grant did, so it looks like I can't possibly get to all of them this week - at the moment I have no plans to watch "The Great Waldo Pepper", for example, or "Havana", but I think I'll manage to have covered the vast majority of his filmography when this week's run is over.
I'm going to regard this film as sort of an earlier version of "Dances With Wolves" - the two films have a lot in common, both feature ex-soldiers who travel out West and find themselves linked with Indian tribes. The final outcomes in the storylines are different, but to me the stories seem to run parallel, at least for a while.
However, I found a lot of the Indian references to be confusing - especially concerning the different tribes mentioned here, the Crow and the Blackfoot tribes. They also used the term "flathead", and I was never sure which tribe that referred to, if that was a derogatory term for Indians in general or one of those two tribes, or whether there was a third tribe with that name.
Jeremiah Johnson (his name was changed from the source material's "Liver-Eatin' Johnson") was clearly an enemy of one tribe, but ended up married to a squaw from another tribe. There were plenty of opportunities to mention which tribe she was from, but I'm not sure that it ever happened. I had to go to Wikipedia's plot summary to find out that the first tribe he encountered was the Crow, then he adopts a son who had family members killed by the Blackfoot tribe. Then later it's the Christianized Flathead Indians who take him in and give him his wife. Ah, so we are dealing with three different tribes here. I maintain the film could have done more to make the distinction.
But there is plenty of action, and a lot of beautiful landscape scenes - filmed in Utah, where Redford obviously has had connections for many years, both owning property and advising the Sundance Festival there.
Also starring Will Geer (last seen in "In Cold Blood"), Delle Bolton, Josh Albee, Stefan Gierasch, with cameos from Charles Tyner, Paul Benedict (last seen in "Cold Turkey"), Matt Clark (last seen in "Some Kind of Hero").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Hawkens rifles
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