The Hired Hand Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

The Hired Hand Blu-ray Movie Review

Like father, like son?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 20, 2018

It's probably near impossible to totally divorce Peter Fonda from his father's impact, perhaps especially within the confines of the western idiom that the younger Fonda exploits in the often stunningly beautiful The Hired Hand. Henry Fonda’s filmography is long and diverse, spanning several decades and well over one hundred appearances in either big screen or television outings. With a history that commanding, it’s probably unfair to even try to pigeonhole the actor in only one genre, and yet it’s the western that tends to loom large in any analysis of Fonda’s contributions to the Art of Cinema. Fonda’s very first film appearance in 1935 might seem to be a western based on its title, The Farmer Takes a Wife, but while it may be possible to kind of stuff this “square peg” into that “round hole”, since the film does kinda sorta deal with a rural setting in the 19th century, it's actually more of a comedy of manners. Even Fonda’s follow up in 1935, Way Down East, might manage to qualify (if only barely) as a western, but it’s probably 1936’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine which might be thought of as the first “real” western of Fonda’s career. The subsequent years provide a veritable laundry list of both notable and perhaps less stellar westerns that starred or featured Fonda, including 1939’s Jesse James and Drums Along the Mohawk, 1940’s The Return of Frank James, 1943’s The Ox-Bow Incident, 1946’s My Darling Clementine, 1948’s Fort Apache, 1957’s The Tin Star, 1962’s How the West Was Won, 1965’s The Rounders, 1966’s A Big Hand for the Little Lady, 1967’s Welcome to Hard Times, 1968’s Firecreek and Once Upon a Time in the West, and 1970’s The Cheyenne Social Club and There Was a Crooked Man just some of the many films that helped establish Fonda as a stalwart of what Variety used to call “oaters”. That said, even a cursory glance over all of the above titles might suggest that many of Fonda’s “westerns”, like the very first two films I listed, tended to stretch the boundaries of the genre and were perhaps “westerns” in name only. Which brings us to The Hired Hand, Peter Fonda’s elegiac ode to a bygone era, and one which tends to play on both his family legacy as well as his father’s tendency to appear in supposed westerns that may have had more on their filmic minds than “simple” showdowns and shootouts.

Despite them being at least one generation younger than the characters portrayed by Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott in Ride the High Country, an iconic western that I for one could easily imagine Henry Fonda having been in, Harry Collings (Peter Fonda) and Arch Harris (Warren Oates) have the same sort of world weary, seen it all ambience as the characters in the 1962 film. The two have the kind of camaraderie that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of words, but exists on a surplus of unspoken understanding. When the two stop off at a town along with a third cohort of theirs named Dan Griffen (Robert Pratt), an almost random event sets the pair on a quest for vengeance, one that involves the scheming town boss McVey (Severn Darden). All of this could easily have been made into a film itself, but it’s notable that this is really just the setup for an ultimate (and admittedly probably predictable) showdown later in the film.

Instead, the film seems to be taking a detour of sorts when Collings announces he’s decided to return to his wife Hannah (Verna Bloom), whom he hasn’t seen in years. The middle part of the film documents the slow reestablishment of a relationship between the pair, with the film’s title referring to Collings’ initial “role” with his erstwhile spouse back at the farmstead. Even here, in this relationship, there’s a kind of unspoken profundity taking place between two emotionally tamped down characters, all of it playing out against some really staggering cinematography courtesy of Vilmos Zsigmond, whose first feature film this was.

Peter Fonda’s commentary is often fascinating in some of the references he mentions. He gets positively metaphysical at times, as in discussing the opening montage where he refers to Collings as a “fisher of men”, and the sight of a naked guy stumbling on a riverbank rock a suitable allegory for human evolution and what Fonda perceives as happening when we as a species stepped out of the primordial ooze. I’m not sure the entire film actually holds up to such an analysis, but it has a rare majesty and breadth about it, not afraid to explore the wide open spaces not just of the American West but those that can exist between best friends or even a husband and wife.

The Hired Hand Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Hired Hand is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Academy with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the transfer:

The Hired Hand is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with mono sound. The film was restored in 2001 by NBC Universal with the participation of director Peter Fonda, using the original picture negative as its primary source element. The High Definition master was made available by NBC Universal via Hollywood Classics.

This is an often staggeringly beautiful film, but perhaps surprisingly it tends to be on the dowdy brown side a lot of the time, as perhaps can be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review. Also, as is kind of humorously addressed in some of the supplements included on this release, while Fonda initially told editor Frank Mazzolla "no montages", montages are exactly what Mazzolla provided, and there are a lot of opticals here, with superimpositions and the like. Add to that some stylized lensing choices, and detail levels can understandably be somewhat variable throughout this presentation. In less stylized moments, detail and fine detail levels are typically excellent and the palette, while not overly warm, looks authentic. Grain resolves naturally for the most part, save for a couple of spikes on occasion, including in some darker scenes, where perhaps the secondary element alluded to above was used.

The Hired Hand Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Hired Hand's LPCM Mono track is often quite evocative, despite its inherent narrowness, offering both nicely rendered ambient environmental sounds with a clear accounting of the wonderful score by Bruce Langhorne, a kind of "jangly, rootsy" affair featuring instruments like hammered dulcimer. Dialogue is similarly offered cleanly and clearly, and the track shows no evident signs of age related wear and tear.

The Hired Hand Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Peter Fonda


• The Return of The Hired Hand (1080i; 58:47) stems from 2003 and includes good interviews with Peter Fonda, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, composer Bruce Langhorn, and Verna Bloom.


• The Odd Man (1080p; 52:00) is a 1978 piece profiling three Scottish screenwriters, including The Hired Hand's Alan Sharp.


• Martin Scorsese on The Hired Hand (1080i; 2:01) offers some brief introductory comments by the film legend, who places the film in the context of adventurous early seventies fare.


• Deleted Scenes

  Barkeep Innuendo (1080i; 1:16)

  Dumb Animals, Horses (1080i; 2:21)

  Morning After (1080i; 1:41)

  Lookin' for Work (1080i; 4:51)

  Saloon School (1080i; 9:54)

  Gunfight (Alternative Ending) (1080i; 3:19)

• Warren Oates and Peter Fonda at the NFT (1:16:53) is an audio recording made in 1971 at the London Film Festival. This comes with a warning about "inconsistencies" in audio quality.


• Stills Gallery (1080p; 5:00)


• Trailers

  Trailer 1 (1080i; 1:26)

  Trailer 2 (1080i; 00:53)

  Trailer 3 (1080i; 2:33)

  Trailer 4 (1080i; 2:01)

• TV Spots

  TV Spot 1 (1080i; 1:02)

  TV Spot 2 (1080i; 00:32)

  TV Spot 3 (1080i; 00:23)

  TV Spot 4 (1080i; 00:13)

• Radio Spots

  Radio Spot 1 (00:44)

  Radio Spot 2 (00:28)

  Radio Spot 3 (1080i; 00:28)

  Radio Spot 4 (1080i; 00:11)

As usual, Arrow has also provided a nicely appointed insert booklet.

The Hired Hand Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Hired Hand has a lot going on just beneath a fairly tamped down surface, and for that reason some viewers may feel there isn't anything going on. Even for those folks, Vilmos Zsigmond's lovely cinematography and Bruce Langhorne's wonderful score may provide more than enough distraction, and the film is also graced with nice, lived in feeling, performances from the principal cast. Technical merits are solid, and Arrow has also provided some enjoyable supplements. Recommended.