Sadly Over-hyped

Don't Believe the Hype

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Gene Hackman was so prolific that even though he has retired from acting for over a decade you can still find a new performance from him even if it is some old, obscure film.This is a bleak, dark but vacant Scandi-drama decades before they came in vogue with added crime mysteries.Gene Hackman is a rugged rancher in the Big Sur. This is an isolated and backward community. A wilderness. He has ordered a mail order bride from Scandinavia. The main reason is that he wants sons who would take over the ranch from him before he gets too old.When the wife arrives he effectively treats her as a slave and even forces himself on her. This is a tell it how it was in the old days in the 19th century.Liv Ullmann plays his wife and she does not take it lying down and is determined to turn the farm into a home and turn him into somewhat respectable. Susan Tyrell plays a floozy that Hackman seems to have has past dalliance with. Hackman is wary of her, this is a clannish community with hints of inbreeding. Hackman does not want bad blood hence why he has got a wife from the outside.There is an outdoor barbecue scene where we learn a little about this isolated community and also Hackman's family life. If you think Hackman is bad, he is a progressive compared to his father. Hackman's mother is very much aware what Ullman is going through and knows how hard life and her own husband has been to her.Hackman and Ullman resolve to make their marriage work and she rewards him with issue. In turns he softens a little, he gets her nice clothes and even a stove from San Francisco.The film is a slow burn drama but not much action. For those of us, myself included whose only experience of The Big Sur is the coastal route to LA to San Francisco or vice-versa this is an insight to a real community that once lived beyond the roads.The film is rewarded with wonderful photography but the film feels empty despite rich performances.

Rugged, impolite frontiersman in Old West Northern California is immediately displeased with his mail-order bride when he sees that she has lied about her age; she's overwhelmed with the remoteness of his shack ("a pigsty") and by her new husband's unwashed, ungainly manner. Swedish director Jan Troell attempts to build momentum in this tumultuous relationship, but he does so like a bricklayer. One can practically check off the scenes from a list: the marriage rape, the visit from the old girlfriend, the husband's injury, the wife brushing out her lustrous hair in front of the fire. Troell is not a formulaic filmmaker, yet this nearly plays like a parody of his earlier "The Emigrants" (with a cartoonish Appalachian-flavored score and by-the-numbers male-female relations). Liv Ullmann's English has greatly improved, though she's still not convincing as a woman "from American stock" and her performance is disappointing; Gene Hackman, cast yet again as a snarling sonuvabitch, is somewhat more suited to the surroundings, but his character has no positive attributes (and watching his 'growth' isn't enlightening or surprising). The cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth and Frank M. Holgate is very good, and there are dramatic scene compositions which are intricate and well-realized, but this script is pretty dusty. *1/2 from ****

Zandy's Bride is quite interesting because it deals with a theme that has become relevant again in the 21st century. It's about a mail order bride, and of course with the introduction of the Internet into the majority of modern homes, the idea shopping for a wife has once again reared its ugly head. Beyond the topicality, however, the film is a failure on most other counts.Gene Hackman plays a rough and rugged pioneer living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. He is waiting around for a mail order bride from Scandinavia, and when she arrives he mistreats her. It's not that he's a nasty man, more that he has lived a simple and uncomplicated life and he finds it hard to relate properly to another human being (especially of the opposite sex) after so many years of labouring away in such lonely surroundings.The bride is played well by Liv Ullmann. The backdrop to the film is beautifully captured. Beyond the performances and the scenery, there's not much else to hold the attention. It's a boring film, critically hindered by the fact that it has too little to say and no notable plot to follow through to a logical conclusion. The unsuited pair meet, fall out a lot, and that's just about it. As much as I admire Hackman (worth watching in all his films... a real consummate actor), this one just isn't worth the effort. Skip it.

California in the mid-nineteenth century was a ravishingly lovely, sparsely-populated wilderness. The people of the coastal strip eked a living from their wooded valleys as small-scale cattlemen and dirt farmers. Their contact with the outside world (or with one another, for that matter) was limited.Zandy Allan is a poor farmer and a bachelor. His smallholding in the steep hills above Big Sur is squalid and joyless. He has decided to obtain a wife because he wants sons to help him manage the livestock, and so he has answered a newspaper advertisement. His wife-to-be is a slight, attractive Scandinavian woman and she is travelling westwards from Minneapolis to meet him ...A modest and engaging little western, "Zandy's Bride" relies solely on its two stars, Gene Hackman and Liv Ullman, for its interest. There are no stampedes or shootouts, no indian wars or lynchings. It is a quiet domestic piece, an essay on human character - no more, and no less."You don't know nothin' 'bout marriage," Zandy is told by his mother (Eileen Heckart), "'cept from pa an' me." And what a baleful example of conjugality the older Allans are. Without charm, verbal skills or even basic courtesy, Zandy's father treats his wife as if she were one of his animals. If Zandy is brutal and inflexible (and he is), it is small wonder. More than half an hour of Zandy's on-screen relationship with his wife passes before we even learn her name.The only external events in the movie are the barbecue (was that term really current among Californian sodbusters 150 years ago?) and Zandy's foray to San Francisco. The barbecue's main plot function is to enable Zandy to be tempted by Maria (Susan Tyrrell). The San Francisco sojourn is the watershed in the marriage of Zandy and Hannah. When he returns, both partners have grown emotionally. Zandy has learnt to accommodate a will other than his own, and Hannah has become stronger by being a mother. The two central performances are outstanding. Hackman in particular is terrific. He presents Zandy as a coarse, selfish thug and manages to retain our sympathy. As he sits at the table after returning from the city, his stream of different facial expressions is brilliant, his eyes flickering with conflicting feelings of bravado, hurt and anxiety to please.The direction of Jan Troell (this being an American/Scandinavian co-production) is quiet and unspectacular but wholly competent. For example, Zandy is jostled by passers-by on the sidewalks of San Francisco, an economic way of showing us that he is unfamiliar with the ways of society. The incidental music by Franks and Carlin is superb, with its salty 'American vernacular' flavour. George Cronenwerth's cinematography is beautifully clear and attractive, capturing the feel of primitive rural life with its rich browns and ochres.How on earth did they shoot the scene where Zandy injures his horse by driving it too hard up the slope?