Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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Jeremiah Johnson is a 1972 western film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford as the title character and Will Geer as "Bear Claw" Chris Lapp. The film has been said to have been based in part on the life of the legendary mountain man Liver-Eating Johnson, based on Raymond Thorp and Robert Bunker's book Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson and Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man.

Plot: A jaded veteran of the Mexican War (1846-48), Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford) seeks solace and refuge in the West. He aims to take up the life of a mountain man, supporting himself in the Rocky Mountains as a trapper. His first winter in the mountain country is a difficult one; he has a brief run in with Paints-His-Shirt-Red, a chief of the Crow tribe, who observes a starving Johnson futilely fishing by hand.
Initially, Johnson uses a .30 caliber Hawken rifle for hunting and protection, but finds it under-powered for his needs. He stumbles on the frozen body of Hatchet Jack (another mountain man), clutching a .50 caliber Hawken in his dead hands. Jack's legs were broken while fighting a bear, and knowing he was going to die, wrote a will out giving his rifle to the first man who comes across his corpse. Johnson gladly takes it for his own. He then inadvertently disrupts the grizzly bear hunt of the elderly and eccentric "Bear Claw" Chris Lapp (Will Geer). After meeting at gunpoint ("I know who you are; you're the same dumb pilgrim I've been hearin' for twenty days and smellin' for three!"), Lapp takes him in and mentors him on living in the high country. After a brush with Crow Indians, including Paints-His-Shirt-Red (a friend of Lapp's), and learning the skills required to survive in the mountains, Johnson sets off on his own.
In his travels, he comes across a small cabin whose inhabitants were apparently attacked by Blackfoot warriors, leaving only a woman and her uncommunicative son as survivors. The woman, maddened by grief, forces Johnson to adopt her son. He and the boy - whom Johnson dubs "Caleb" (Josh Albee) - come across Del Gue (Stefan Gierasch) ("With an E"!), a mountain man in severe disfavor with several local Indian tribes. The bald-headed Gue has been robbed by the Blackfeet. They buried him up to his neck in the sand and stuffed feathers up his nose. Rescued by Johnson, Gue travels with him and Caleb, and they eventually come across a Blackfoot camp.

–from wikipedia

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

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