Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Director:

Sydney Pollack

Writers:

Vardis Fisher (novel)
Raymond W. Thorp (story) ...

Release Date:

10 September 1972 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama | Western

Tagline:

A man of peace driven wild!

Plot:

A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta...

Plot Keywords:

Mountain | Trapper | Mountain Man | Rocky Mountains | Hermit

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

US TV Schedule:

Sun. Dec. 27	8:00 PM	AMC
Mon. Dec. 28	5:30 PM	AMC

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

Also Known As:

Crow Killer (USA) (working title)
Liver Eatin' Johnson (USA) (original script title)

Runtime:

108 min | 116 min (long version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

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

Certification:

UK:PG | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | Canada:PG

Filming Locations:

Alpine Loop, Utah, USA

Company:

Sanford Productions (III)

Trivia:

Liver Eatin' Johnston's wife (who was pregnant at the time) was actually killed by a random raiding party of Blackfeet not in revenge for a violation of their burial grounds. She was killed in the Spring while Johnston was off trapping and he didn't return to find her body until several months later. He identified the band that had killed her because he recognized a Tennessee rifle he had given her in the possession of a Crow warrior. Also, rather than isolated incidents as shown in the movie, Johnston often recruited other mountain men as well as Indians (particularly Flatheads) to help him with his vendetta. The part about the warriors sent to kill him and told not to return without his scalp was true.

Goofs:

Errors in geography: The rescue party tells JJ they have been watched all the way from the Gila River. The Gila is 400 miles south of the Colorado border.

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...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Deadly Bees (#10.5)" (1998)

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…