Jeremiah Johnson – 1972
His Mountain. His Peace. His Great Hunts. His Young Bride. With All That, It Should Have Been Different.

Director
Sydney Pollack

Writers
Vardis Fisher (novel Mountain Man)
Raymond W. Thorp (story Crow Killer) and
Robert Bunker (story Crow Killer)
John Milius (screenplay) and
Edward Anhalt (screenplay)
David Rayfiel uncredited

Producers

John R. Coonan associate producer
Mike Moder associate producer
Joe Wizan producer

Cast
Robert Redford – Jeremiah Johnson
Will Geer – Bear Claw Chris Lapp
Delle Bolton – Swan
Josh Albee – Caleb
Joaquín Martínez – Paints His Shirt Red (as Joaquin Martinez)
Allyn Ann McLerie – Crazy Woman
Stefan Gierasch – Del Gue
Richard Angarola – Flathead Chief Two-Tongues Lebeaux
Paul Benedict – Rev. Lindquist
Charles Tyner – Robidoux
Jack Colvin – Lt. Mulvey (3rd Cavalry)
Matt Clark – Qualen
Tanya Tucker – Qualen’s daughter (uncredited)

Review by John Rouse Merriott Chard

The Rocky Mountains are the marrow of the World
Jeremiah Johnson is directed by Sydney Pollack and is inspired by two books, Raymond Thorp and Robert Bunker’s Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson and Vardis Fisher’s Mountain Man. Script was written by John Millius and Edward Anhalt and cinematography is by Duke Callaghan. It stars Robert Redford, Will Geer, Stefan Gierasch, Delle Bolton and Josh Albee.

Hardened after the war with Mexico, and fed up with everyday life, American Jeremiah Johnson (Redford) leaves civilisation behind to live life as a mountain man. He intends to be self-sufficient as a trapper, but he finds that mother nature can be tough, and out here in the mountain wilderness he is not alone. There are others here, and Jeremiah must face many challenges if he is to truly survive.

Filmed entirely on location in the vast wilderness beauty of Utah, Jeremiah Johnson is light on plot but all the better for it. Film basically constitutes Redford’s mountain man learning to survive up in them thar mountains, and, earning the right to do so. A number of issues will arise to test his metal, giving him a number of hardships and adventures to define his transformation from average Joe to a fully fledged mythical man of the Earth. Redford is wonderfully at ease in the title role, and very quickly he gets the audience on side to share in his journey. But ultimately it’s the landscapes that you take away from this movie. Not only gorgeous, but also the critical character that frames Johnson during his isolation and battle for survival. 8/10

Review by Bill Slocum
Frontier Saga Drowsy But Authentic

“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.
Review by Theo Robertson

I got a massive fright when I saw this because I misheard some of the early dialogue when someone says to the title character – ” You just came to molest my hunt ” which had me thinking the title of the movie should have been BILL CLINTON and not JEREMIAH JOHNSON , but I do assure you I did realise within seconds what the actual line was

This is a movie that’s let down by a lack of dialogue since much of the narrative involves a lone character who has no one to bounce lines off , that’s why a lot of books like Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND are somewhat unfilmable because many pages are devoted to a character living alone with thought process informing the reader as to what they’re thinking

It’s also a very poorly edited movie where we see wild wolves attack Johnson which is both confusing and laughable . A jump cut leads to a wolf biting Johnson’s hand then another jump cut to the wolf biting his leg . It’s also obvious that the ” attack ” is done by filming a real wolf jumping then cutting to someone throwing a cuddly stuffed wolf at Redford ! There’s also a very confusing scene involving Johnson fighting an Indian where he falls in a river , cut to a mountain range then a log cabin where Johnson kills and Indian in a fight . Is it the same fight ? the same Indian ? You tell me

The real Jeremiah Johnson was a rabid Indian hater involved in a blood feud with Indians but this movie seems produced to appeal to a PG audience hence the story has been toned down which might have ruined the potential somewhat if the haphazard editing and production values hadn’t done so