The Hired Hand
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| + | "And sometimes i'd have him or he'd have me whatever suits you." --Hannah (Bloom) to Harry Collings (Fonda) on her sleeping with "hired hands". | ||
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| '''''The Hired Hand''''' is a 1971 [[western (genre)|western film]] directed by [[Peter Fonda]], with a screenplay by [[Alan Sharp]]. The film stars Fonda, [[Warren Oates]], and [[Verna Bloom]]. The cinematography was by [[Vilmos Zsigmond]], and [[Bruce Langhorne]] provided the moody [[film score]]. The story is about a man who returns to his abandoned wife after seven years of drifting from job to job throughout the southwest. The embittered woman will only let him stay if he agrees to move in as a [[hired hand]]. | '''''The Hired Hand''''' is a 1971 [[western (genre)|western film]] directed by [[Peter Fonda]], with a screenplay by [[Alan Sharp]]. The film stars Fonda, [[Warren Oates]], and [[Verna Bloom]]. The cinematography was by [[Vilmos Zsigmond]], and [[Bruce Langhorne]] provided the moody [[film score]]. The story is about a man who returns to his abandoned wife after seven years of drifting from job to job throughout the southwest. The embittered woman will only let him stay if he agrees to move in as a [[hired hand]]. | ||
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The Hired Hand is a 1971 western film directed by Peter Fonda, with a screenplay by Alan Sharp. The film stars Fonda, Warren Oates, and Verna Bloom. The cinematography was by Vilmos Zsigmond, and Bruce Langhorne provided the moody film score. The story is about a man who returns to his abandoned wife after seven years of drifting from job to job throughout the southwest. The embittered woman will only let him stay if he agrees to move in as a hired hand.
Upon release, the film received a mixed critical response and was a financial failure. In 1973, the film was shown on NBC-TV in an expanded version, but soon drifted into obscurity, and was not issued on home video format until 2001, when, following critically acclaimed showings of a fully restored version at various film festivals, it was released by the Sundance Channel on DVD.
Plot
Harry Collings (Fonda) and Arch Harris (Oates) are two saddle tramps who have grown weary after seven years of wandering through the American Southwest. Along with a younger companion, Dan Griffen (Robert Pratt), they stop off in Del Norte, a ramshackle town in the middle of nowhere, which is run by the corrupt McVey (Severn Darden). Harris and Griffen discuss traveling to California to look for work when Collings abruptly informs them he has decided to return to the wife he left years before. Griffen temporarily leaves the two in a bar and goes to buy supplies. Some town thugs shoot him to death out of pure meanness. Collings and Harris escape, but they return that night. Collings shoots McVey in the feet, crippling him.
After riding hundreds of miles back to his old house, Collings finds a cold welcome from his wife Hannah (Bloom). In order to be allowed to stay, he offers his services simply as a “hired hand”. Hannah agrees and quickly puts him to work. Gradually, the distrust and unease caused by years of estrangement slip away, and the two begin to become close again. For the first time, Collings feels willing to settle down, but Harris leaves, wanting 'to see the ocean'.
McVey and his troupe of hooligans interrupt his life. Learning that they have kidnapped Harris, Collings leaves Hannah again, this time to save his friend. In a subsequent brutal shootout with McVey's gang, all of the villains are killed and Collings is fatally wounded. Harris rides alone to Hannah's house.
