From the beautiful first five minutes of shimmering water, silhouetted figures, dissolving and overlapping images, all made poetic by Bruce Langhorne’s score, I was very into Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand (1971). Thankfully, everything after that made good on that opening’s promise. After the huge success of Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper went to make the deconstructive doomed meta-western The Last Movie. Peter Fonda helmed his directorial debut with his western, The Hired Hand and went in a different direction with complete artistic control from Paramount Pictures. It’s still a classic 1970s American movie in being a bummer and a downer – but it’s also very satisfying and lyrical. Fonda plays Harry, a drifting cowboy who has ridden a long time with his buddy Arch (Warren Oates, great). However, Harry wants to stop riding and decides to return to the farm where he left his wife Hannah (Verna Bloom, also great) and child seven years ago. Almost strangers to each other, Hannah is cold to Harry’s return and he offers the compromise to work the farm as a hired hand. The characters are finely etched and it strikes the right moody, introspective tone. A love triangle between the three characters where a lot is unspoken or conveyed in gestures and plain speech. There are great performances here by Fonda, Warren Oates and Verna Bloom. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography (one of his first major films; he would shoot McCabe and Mrs Miller after this one) and Frank Mazzola’s editing are true stars of this artful picture. Scripted by Alan Sharp (who also wrote the neo-noir Night Moves). A financial failure upon release, The Hired Hand has now received critical praise and respect, and is definite viewing for fans of the Western genre and moody 1970s dramas. Available to stream in Australia on Tubi. Recommended.
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