The Hired Hand (15.)
Directed by Peter Fonda. (1971.)
Starring Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Verna Bloom and Robert Pratt. 90 mins. Available on dual format Blu-ray/ DVD from Arrow Films.
I guess it's no great surprise that after the mammoth, industry shattering success of East Rider, Fonda's next move would be to take on his father's mantle as Western hero. The early seventies was the height of New Hollywood, that surge of hippies and counter culture types who briefly ran wild after the old studio system seemed to have collapsed under the weight of yet another failed big budget musical. It was also the point when both Peckinpah, and the spaghetti western were at their creative peaks, ripping into the husk of the old cowboy movies with an ugly ambivalent fury. The scene was set for the young man to stride into town and tear down the old man's Old Glory legacy; instead he chooses to treat it with restraint and consideration.
Fonda's cowboy persona is hard to fix. Tall, erect and with a heavy beard, at times he looks like a pre mythologized, non iconic Clint Eastwood. He rides tall in the saddle, has a certain taciturn authority about himself, but ultimately he's an ordinary chap. He's a Petty Offender Josey Wales. At other times his scrawny physique and unkemptness makes him look like the campsite simpleton, the one that will be gunned down emerging from the dunny in his long johns.
When we meet up with him at the start of the film he is experiencing the itinerant, wandering prospector lifestyle alongside Warren Oates and their eager young companion Dan (Pratt.) While the other two are keen to push on into California and see the ocean, Fonda suddenly decides that he is tired of the life, and may go home, back to the wife and child he walked out on seven years before.
Oates is one of those actors that always seem to be the same, and yet within that familiar persona could portray a range of characters, and do it without you even realising it. According to Fonda's commentary on the disc, Oates is there to be wisdom. Oates was usually cast as rash or idiotic characters, yet here he is being a proper pillar of wisdom, but in a restrained and amiable way, not much different from his other roles.
The film's glory is that all of Fonda's hired hands, many of whom were making their cinema debuts, were working at the top of the game. The film looks marvellous thanks to Vilmos Zsigmond. Fonda had approached his Easy Rider cameraman Lazlo Kovacs to shoot it, but he was busy and he suggested his assistant, a fellow Hungarian who he'd escaped to the West with in 1956. Zsigmond would go on to be one of the greats, shooting Close Encounters, The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate and Blow Out. He is not a man who heeded the notion of never looking into the sun, and his images are full of strips of light that have been careful pulled into his camera. In the opening shot of Pratt frolicking in a river, the sun's light forms a kind of curtain over the image. His images are often spectacular, but also life-like. The film has glorious skyscapes but then there are shots that are as mundane as TV. (In the same year he got to experience the other extreme of the anti-western, shooting Altman's snowbound MacCabe and Mrs Miller.)
In praising the film's look, we should also acknowledge the work Lawrence G. Paull who did the production design, the man who would go on to play a major role in shaping the look of Blade Runner. The score by Bruce Longbourne is instantly brilliant. Simple, authentic and poignant, it is in your head before the film even starts. You hear it playing over the disc menu and immediately feel reassured that this isn't going to be a waste of time. The editing is by Frank Mazzola who had just done Performance. This is much more restrained but the use of still frames and slow motion is hugely effective. There's a sequence where a family are waving goodbye which has been slowed down almost imperceptibly and the effect is just perfect. There's also a scene where Fonda and Oates are talking in silhouette across a camp-fire and their faces are projected onto the sky behind them.
The script by Alan Sharp, attempts something really daring and difficult, to dramatise the move from freedom and lawlessness to domesticity. This is tricky because it's taking us in the wrong direction, the way we don't want to go. We don't want our protagonists to settle down, quite the opposite. If we are being honest I think the film does lose a little something after the first half hour, but it is hard to think of a way that could be avoided.
This is a slight niggle though, The Hired Hand is a wonderful film. The disc presents us with a restored version courtesy of Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation. Apparently Fonda himself suggested to Scorsese that his own film should be restored and you see his point. It's shameless, but he doesn't have many career highlights and it would be horrible to think of your one really great achievement being lost through neglect.
Extras• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements by Universal
• Uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM Audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary by actor-director Peter Fonda
• The Return of The Hired Hand, a 2003 documentary containing interviews with Fonda, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, composer Bruce Langhorne, actor Verna Bloom and others
• Deleted scenes
• The Odd Man, Charles Gormley and Bill Forsyth’s 1978 documentary portrait of Scottish screenwriters, including Alan Sharp [Blu-ray exclusive]
• Interview with Martin Scorsese
• Warren Oates and Peter Fonda at the National Film Theatre, an audio recording of the actors’ appearance at the NFT in 1971
• Stills gallery
• Trailers
• TV spots
• Radio spots
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips
.
Directed by Peter Fonda. (1971.)
Starring Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Verna Bloom and Robert Pratt. 90 mins. Available on dual format Blu-ray/ DVD from Arrow Films.
I guess it's no great surprise that after the mammoth, industry shattering success of East Rider, Fonda's next move would be to take on his father's mantle as Western hero. The early seventies was the height of New Hollywood, that surge of hippies and counter culture types who briefly ran wild after the old studio system seemed to have collapsed under the weight of yet another failed big budget musical. It was also the point when both Peckinpah, and the spaghetti western were at their creative peaks, ripping into the husk of the old cowboy movies with an ugly ambivalent fury. The scene was set for the young man to stride into town and tear down the old man's Old Glory legacy; instead he chooses to treat it with restraint and consideration.
Fonda's cowboy persona is hard to fix. Tall, erect and with a heavy beard, at times he looks like a pre mythologized, non iconic Clint Eastwood. He rides tall in the saddle, has a certain taciturn authority about himself, but ultimately he's an ordinary chap. He's a Petty Offender Josey Wales. At other times his scrawny physique and unkemptness makes him look like the campsite simpleton, the one that will be gunned down emerging from the dunny in his long johns.
When we meet up with him at the start of the film he is experiencing the itinerant, wandering prospector lifestyle alongside Warren Oates and their eager young companion Dan (Pratt.) While the other two are keen to push on into California and see the ocean, Fonda suddenly decides that he is tired of the life, and may go home, back to the wife and child he walked out on seven years before.
Oates is one of those actors that always seem to be the same, and yet within that familiar persona could portray a range of characters, and do it without you even realising it. According to Fonda's commentary on the disc, Oates is there to be wisdom. Oates was usually cast as rash or idiotic characters, yet here he is being a proper pillar of wisdom, but in a restrained and amiable way, not much different from his other roles.
The film's glory is that all of Fonda's hired hands, many of whom were making their cinema debuts, were working at the top of the game. The film looks marvellous thanks to Vilmos Zsigmond. Fonda had approached his Easy Rider cameraman Lazlo Kovacs to shoot it, but he was busy and he suggested his assistant, a fellow Hungarian who he'd escaped to the West with in 1956. Zsigmond would go on to be one of the greats, shooting Close Encounters, The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate and Blow Out. He is not a man who heeded the notion of never looking into the sun, and his images are full of strips of light that have been careful pulled into his camera. In the opening shot of Pratt frolicking in a river, the sun's light forms a kind of curtain over the image. His images are often spectacular, but also life-like. The film has glorious skyscapes but then there are shots that are as mundane as TV. (In the same year he got to experience the other extreme of the anti-western, shooting Altman's snowbound MacCabe and Mrs Miller.)
In praising the film's look, we should also acknowledge the work Lawrence G. Paull who did the production design, the man who would go on to play a major role in shaping the look of Blade Runner. The score by Bruce Longbourne is instantly brilliant. Simple, authentic and poignant, it is in your head before the film even starts. You hear it playing over the disc menu and immediately feel reassured that this isn't going to be a waste of time. The editing is by Frank Mazzola who had just done Performance. This is much more restrained but the use of still frames and slow motion is hugely effective. There's a sequence where a family are waving goodbye which has been slowed down almost imperceptibly and the effect is just perfect. There's also a scene where Fonda and Oates are talking in silhouette across a camp-fire and their faces are projected onto the sky behind them.
The script by Alan Sharp, attempts something really daring and difficult, to dramatise the move from freedom and lawlessness to domesticity. This is tricky because it's taking us in the wrong direction, the way we don't want to go. We don't want our protagonists to settle down, quite the opposite. If we are being honest I think the film does lose a little something after the first half hour, but it is hard to think of a way that could be avoided.
This is a slight niggle though, The Hired Hand is a wonderful film. The disc presents us with a restored version courtesy of Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation. Apparently Fonda himself suggested to Scorsese that his own film should be restored and you see his point. It's shameless, but he doesn't have many career highlights and it would be horrible to think of your one really great achievement being lost through neglect.
Extras• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements by Universal
• Uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM Audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary by actor-director Peter Fonda
• The Return of The Hired Hand, a 2003 documentary containing interviews with Fonda, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, composer Bruce Langhorne, actor Verna Bloom and others
• Deleted scenes
• The Odd Man, Charles Gormley and Bill Forsyth’s 1978 documentary portrait of Scottish screenwriters, including Alan Sharp [Blu-ray exclusive]
• Interview with Martin Scorsese
• Warren Oates and Peter Fonda at the National Film Theatre, an audio recording of the actors’ appearance at the NFT in 1971
• Stills gallery
• Trailers
• TV spots
• Radio spots
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips
.
