Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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.

Director:

Sydney Pollack

Writers:

Vardis Fisher (novel), Raymond W. Thorp (story "Crow Killer")

Stars:

Robert Redford, Will Geer, Delle Bolton

1 win & 1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Robert Redford	...	Jeremiah Johnson
Will Geer	...	Bear Claw
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	...	Chief Two-Tongues Lebeaux
Paul Benedict	...	Reverend Lindquist
Charles Tyner	...	Robidoux
Jack Colvin	...	Lieutenant Mulvey
Matt Clark	...	Qualen

Storyline

During the mid-nineteenth century, Jeremiah Johnson, after a stint in the US Army, decides that he would prefer a life of solitude and more importantly peace by living with nature in the mountains of the frontier of the American west. This plan entails finding a piece of land upon which to build a house. This quest ends up being not quite what he envisioned as he does require the assistance of others to find his footing, and in turn he amasses friends and acquaintances along the way, some who become more a part of his life than he would have imagined. Perhaps most importantly, some of those people provide him with the knowledge of how to co-exist with some of the many Indian tribes, most importantly the Crow, on whose land in Colorado Jeremiah ultimately decides to build his home. But an act by Jeremiah upon a request by the US Cavalry leads to a chain of events that may forever change the peaceful relationship he worked so hard to achieve with his neighbors and their land.

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Plot Keywords:

native american | mountain man | trapper | hermit | rocky mountains | 

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Taglines:

some say he's dead...some say he never will be.

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Genres:

Adventure | Drama | Western

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Certificate:

GP

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Crow French

Release Date:

10 September 1972 (Sweden)

Also Known As:

Crow Killer

Filming Locations:

Kayenta, Arizona, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$3,100,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$47,742,000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Sanford Productions (III),Warner Bros.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

108 min 116 min (long)

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) Mono (35 mm prints) Dolby Digital

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Not until the very end of shooting the picture did director Sydney Pollack decide the fate of what would happen to Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford) at the end of the film, though in reality, Redford decided.

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Goofs

Del Gue clothes are pristine with the bright colors unaffected after being buried in the sand.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: His name was Jeremiah Johnson, and they say he wanted to be a mountain man. The story goes that he was a man of proper wit and adventurous spirit, suited to the mountains. Nobody knows whereabouts he come from and don't seem to matter much. He was a young man and ghosty stories about the tall hills didn't scare him none. He was looking for a Hawken gun, .50 caliber or better. He settled for a .30, but damn, it was a genuine Hawken, and you couldn't go no better. Bought him a good ...

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Connections

Edited into La classe américaine (1993)

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Soundtracks

An Indian Says
(uncredited)
Written by John Rubinstein,Tim McIntire

User Reviews

In shooting his character as a solitary figure against a field of white, Pollack turned Johnson into something bordering on a spiritual experience…

Filmed in the snow-covered vastness of the Utah Rocky Mountains, Robert Redford plays well a deserter from the Mexican War who wages a bitter struggle against the elements and Indians in order to lead a life of solitude…

He heads into the mountains, only to find that there is the wind that never seems to stop… Sometimes he swears he is going insane while the storms that he has never seen screech booming with their thunder… Around him, snow squalls that kill everything that is unprepared… Jeremiah's first winter proves almost fatal because of his inexperience in coping with the harsh Rockies… Fortunately, he meets a real mountain man seasoned to the ways of the wild… Bear Claw takes Johnson in and shares his knowledge with him…

Travelling the untamed wilderness, Jeremiah finds out that it is a land fit only for the savages, and he has seen what they are like… But he has seen worse when he happens upon an Indian massacre of a settler's family or upon a bald man buried to his neck in sand by Blackfeet Indians… And much worse after violating the Crow sacred burial ground while helping cavalry men find some lost settlers…