Jeremiah Johnson (film)

In April 1968, producer Sidney Beckerman acquired the film rights to the biographical book Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson by Raymond W. Thorp Jr. and Robert Bunker. By May 1970, the rights were acquired by Warner Bros., who assigned John Milius to write a screen adaptation.[5] Based roughly on Crow Killer as well as Mountain Man: A Novel of Male and Female in the Early American West by Vardis Fisher,[6] Milius first scripted what would become known as Jeremiah Johnson for $5,000; however, he was then hired to rewrite it several times and eventually earned $80,000. According to Milius, Edward Anhalt and David Rayfiel were brought in to work on the screenplay only for Milius to be continually rehired because no one else could do the dialogue. Milius says he got the idiom and American spirit from Carl Sandburg and was also influenced by Charles Portis's novel True Grit.[7]

The role of Jeremiah Johnson was originally intended for Lee Marvin and then Clint Eastwood, with Sam Peckinpah to direct.[8] However, Peckinpah and Eastwood did not get along, so Peckinpah left and Eastwood decided to make Dirty Harry instead.[7] Warner Bros. then stepped in and set up Milius' screenplay for Robert Redford.[9] Without a director, Redford talked Sydney Pollack into it; the two were looking for another film to collaborate on after This Property Is Condemned (1966).[10]

Casting for the role of Swan, Jeremiah's wife, took three months. After auditioning for another role, actress Delle Bolton was spotted by the casting director.[11] Bolton then interviewed alongside 200 Native American women and eventually won the role.[6]

After Warner Bros. advanced Redford $200,000 to secure him for the film, Warner decided that the film had to be shot on the Studio's backlot due to cost constraints. Insisting that it must be shot on location in Utah, Redford and Pollack convinced the studio that this could be done at the same cost.[10] To prepare for production, art director Ted Haworth drove over 26,000 miles to find locations.[6] Ultimately, it was shot in nearly one hundred locations across Utah, including: Mount Timpanogos, Ashley National Forest, Leeds, Snow Canyon State Park, St. George, Sundance Resort, Uinta National Forest, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, and Zion National Park.[12]

Principal photography began in January 1971, but unexpected weather threatened production.[3] Even after Pollack mortgaged his home to supplement the limited budget, production remained constrained.[10] "The snows of St. George in southern Utah were terrible," said Pollack, "and we were using Cinemobiles as the lifelines. There was no way I was going to let it overrun, and Bob was a superb partner in keeping us tight. In the end it was the greatest way to learn production, because I was playing with my own money."[3] Struggling with weather and the budget, rarely were the crew able to shoot any second takes.[13]

The film took seven and a half months to edit. "It's a picture that was made as much in the editing room as it was in the shooting," said Pollack. "It was a film where you used to watch dailies and everybody would fall asleep, except Bob and I, because all you had were these big shots of a guy walking his horse through the snow. You didn't see strong narrative line. It's a picture made out of rhythms and moods and wonderful performances."[14]

The score was composed by Tim McIntire and John Rubinstein (sung by Tim McIntire[15]); known primarily as actors, they were also musicians. This was their film composing debut, arising after Rubinstein met Sydney Pollack through his agent.[16] As Pollack recalls in the DVD commentary, McIntire and Rubinstein were "kids that just auditioned with a tape."[17]

The soundtrack L.P. was not released until 1976 by Warner Bros. Records. On October 5, 2009, a restored and extended version of the L.P. was released by Film Score Monthly.[16]

The film was first released onto DVD by Warner Home Video on October 28, 1997. It was later released onto Blu-ray on May 1, 2012.[24]

In addition to being a commercial success, the film received generally positive reviews. Aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 95% of critics gave it a positive review, based on twenty reviews with a "Certified Fresh" rating, with an average score of 7.1/10 and the consensus stating: "Jeremiah Johnson's deliberate pace demands an investment from the viewer, but it's rewarded with a thoughtful drama anchored by a starring performance from Robert Redford."[25]

The New York Times film critic Roger Greenspun noted in his 1972 review, "That it does not succeed entirely is perhaps less the fault of the actor or of the conception than of a screenplay that tends to be ponderous about its imponderables and that every so often sounds as if it might have been written by the authors of the Bible ... But for all its involvement with academic cinema art, 'Jeremiah Johnson' is full of compensations. There are [moments] of great beauty and terror and deeply earned pathos."[2] A report in Variety from Cannes stated: "The film has its own force and beauty and the only carp might lie in its not always clear exegesis of the humanistic spirit and freedom most of its characters are striving for. It is not a new-type western, with its demystifications, dirt and underlining of the brutishness of the times, as well as its heroic aspects, but it does show a deeper insight into the Indian-white relations and benefits from superb direction, excellent lensing and sharp editing."[26] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "Oddly enough, it is the violent scenes, the ones that don't work within the story, in which Pollack excels. Jeremiah's battle with a pack of wolves, and, later, a pack of Crow Indians, are stunning examples of direction and editing."[27] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times praised the film for "a rare and tonic authenticity," elaborating that "the film does not so much reveal a way of life as thrust us inside it. Making fire with flint and steel looks the miserably frustrating job it is; hunting and fishing look as exasperating as they are; snow looks as cold as it is and hands have the numbed and purpled look it gives them."[28] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post dismissed the film as "rather ponderous" as it "just sort of moseys along, in an academically efficient way, without ever generating enough emotion or accumulating enough personal history. It's remarkably even and remarkably uncompelling."[29] Tom Milne of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "Good as it is, with fine performances and superb camerawork by Andrew Callaghan, Jeremiah Johnson still disappoints because it aims lower than it might have and does some sleight-of-hand to conceal the fact."[30]