Jeremiah Johnson

One of my absolute favorite movies. Believable, great acting and good storyline. An oldie but a goodie. Bluray looks almost as good a 4K on my TV.

Arrived on time and intact. Love this movie. Great story and beautiful scenery.

Awesome movie! Elk don't know how many feet a horse has! 😆

This movie is one of several fascinating historical threads that I have been following since I first saw it as a 12-year old and loved it. First, it is based on the actual life of a mountain man named John Johnston, later changed to Johnson, and known in the West from the mid-1840s as Liver-Eating Johnson (see the book "Crow Killer" published 1958, R.W. Thorp & R. Bunker). I did not know this until recently and assumed it was all fiction. He was a huge man for his time, 6'2" and 240 pounds in his early 20's, had fists the size of baked hams and was best in hand-to-hand fighting with his 16" Bowie knife. Thorp and Bunker based the book on first-person interviews with several mountain men and others who had known of him, including, surprisingly, the famous photographer of the 1870's West, W.H. Jackson (photographer for the Hayden Expedition and famous for the first photograph of Mount of the Holy Cross near Vail, Colorado), but the real detail being furnished by an old mountain man named White-Eye Anderson, who told the story to R.W.T. in 1941 when he was in his 90's. After Johnson's Flathead wife was murdered on the Musselshell in Montana by a band of young Crow braves, Johnson "took the trail" on the entire Crow nation. His calling card, for over 20 years of butchery on the Crows, was to remove the liver of every Crow he killed and eat it. The Crows called him "Dapiek Absaroka". Vardis Fischer, on whose book this movie is based, "borrowed" as well certain scenes from a book written in the 1840's called "Life in the Far West" by George Ruxton, a first-person account of life in and near the Colorado Rockies. This movie does a fine job with a subset of Johnston's life, leaving out his service in the Civil War, and his later life as a town marshal and finally, his death in an old veterans home in Los Angeles. I got the notion that Fischer's book bordered on plagiarism after reading Ruxton, and after reading Crow Killer it seems all Fischer did was change Johnson's name to Jeremiah and slap on a cover with his name on it. The movie also leaves out that Johnson spies, among the pile of bones that was his wife outside the cabin, a round object about the size of an orange - the skull of his unborn baby. He collects the bones of wife and baby and puts them in an iron pot and inters them behind carefully mortised rocks near the cabin; a shrine, his "kittle 'o bones" those closest to him called it (never in his presence) he visits over the years. Will Geer's character, near as I kin figger, is based on a friend of Johnson's named "Bear Claw" Chris Lapp, a man known to say, when presented with grizzly claws his mountain man friends collected for him to make necklaces of, "Great Jehosophat! Pocahontas and John Smith!" The Crazy Woman, one of the most sympathetic characters I have ever seen in a movie, was in real life the wife of John Morgan, a foolish homesteader on the Oregon Trail who quarreled with the wagon master and took off on his own only to be tomahawked and scalped alive by Crows, his daughter raped and scalped alive, and his two young sons killed. Mrs Morgan, having killed several of the Indians with an axe yet driven insane by the loss, lived on the Musselshell and was cared for by Johnson and his fellow mountain men for years. The movie leaves out the little detail that she and Johnson beheaded the Crow corpses and set them on stakes at each corner of the graveyard where she buried her children, the weathered skulls a powerful medicine for the Crows ever after. It was the Crow's deference to this insane white woman living in their midst that finally convinced Johnson to call off his vendetta against them, after having killed nearly 400 Crow warriors. Liver-Eating Johnson's grave (and here I borrow heavily from "Crow Killer") is in a cemetary off of Sepulveda Boulevard (interesting, that. One of Johnson's comrades was a huge black-bearded Hispanic named "Big Anton Sepulveda") in a section called San Juan Hill, row D, 2nd stone from the road reads "Jno. Johnston, Co. H, 2nd Colo. Cav.". Get the movie and enjoy it; it's a true story. Only took me 30 years to find that out.

This is a great movie! Redford is fantastic

First saw "Jeremiah Johnson" when it was released in the theatres in 1972-was captivated by it so much then that a friend of mine and I stayed in the largely empty theatre and sat through it a second time. Since 1972, I've probably rewatched this movie more often than any other, and after 35 years, I've come to the conclusion that what makes it one of my all-time favorite films is something more than the sum of its parts. The movie is only loosely based on the real-life exploits of John Garrison (aka John Johnson, maybe Johnston, but only Jeremiah in the movies), a legendary mountan man/trapper whose heyday was from about 1840 to 1880, before "settling down" and even becoming the sheriff of Red Lodge, Montana at the turn of the century. He died at age 72, and after initially being buried in a military cemetery in Los Angeles(he was a Civil War vet), was re-interred at his final resting place in Cody, Wyoming. Robert Redford served as one of his pall-bearers at his re-burial. I have researched Garrison/Johnson extensively since 1972, and it is perhaps final testimony to the legend that precious little (in the way of verifiable facts) is known about him; the real mountan men weren't around for publicity. The most cited book about his life ( "Crow Killer", by Raymond Thorpe) is widely considered hogwash for the most part, by the so-called modern expert historians of the Old West. But who's to say? It may well be that only the most unbelievable parts are true, and the legend may even be smaller than the real man. "And some folks say....he's up there still." Now, the movie, after 35 years of reflection, as to why I still watch it several times a year: it does suffer from not being seen on the big screen, as one of the stars of the movie is the Uintah Mountain scenery where it was mostly filmed. This is a movie of undeniable atmosphere, with sight and sound being paramount to its spell. And by sound I mean mostly the sparse, unsentimental lyrics of Tim McIntyre's songs, and the beautiful soundtrack, which enhances every scene. There is perhaps the least actual dialogue between principal characters that you will ever see in a film, but again, this adds to the ambiance of the High Lonely, and seems realistic for the time and sort of men these were. No tenderfoots here. The acting is first rate, and the casting spot-on as well. I have read that Redford himself has always considered "Jeremiah Johnson" one of his favorite roles, and it shows in his heart-felt performance. Acting without words most of the film, he is at his best. There are numerous memorable visual images from this gorgeously shot film, but perhaps the most lingering for me is of Johnson's steely face, viewed through the flames of his wilderness cabin as it burns away the remains of his wife, his adopted son, and his briefly happy existence in the wild. We know then that what will happen next ain't gonna be pretty. The story line roughly parallels what is known of the real Johnson's life, but again with a lot of Hollywood revisions, though the overall effect is still satisfying, and the story never drags or seems dull. But after saying all this, there are many other movies I've seen over the years that have some or all of these elements, but have failed to captivate me the way this movie has. And so it seems to me that the enduring quality of "Jeremiah Johnson" is more than the sum of its parts- and I think what that is, is an intense sense of LONGING that pervades this movie.....longing for something better, something more meaningful, something probably spiritual, to realize in this life. In Johnson's acerbic words' "It oughter been DIFFERENT." This is a great western classic, but in a very subdued, unique way. It will not appeal to everyone, even to many fans of the western genre. I'm not sure I even classify it as a western, myself. It's from that period of time when life was hard, but beautiful, and before the industrialization of the mind of man.....but it has a transcendent quality that will always make us want to go back. Only reason I only give it 4 stars is I wish it had been longer. Highly recommended, and nothing in it that I would be reluctant for my wife and kids to watch, either.

Classic 👍👍

Great movie. DVD's are about dead these days with streaming. Get them in hand wile you still can .

Arrived On Time. Great movie.

Parfait 👌

davvero un film appassionante e profondo, dove si vive lo spirito della frontiera selvaggia del West americano, senza nessuna pretesa di voler trarre una morale e senza alcun giudizio. Fantastica la prova di Redford. Imperdibile per chi ama il genere.

Después de la guerra, un soldado hastiado de la civilización busca adentrarse a las inospitas montañas, con buenas actuaciones de Robert Redford y compañía te dejarán una buena impresión imagen excelente subtitulos en español la recomiendo.

Watched it last night and loved it