Jeremiah Johnson

A man leaves the army, goes up the mountain and learns to live alone. The first winter almost kills him; then come a woman, a child and an endless blood feud with the Crow. Sydney Pollack directed and Robert Redford starred. John Milius and Edward Anhalt wrote the screenplay from two books: Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker's Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson and Vardis Fisher's 1965 novel Mountain Man. It follows the legendary mountain man John Jeremiah Johnson loosely. Filming covered nearly a hundred Utah locations, including Zion National Park and the Sundance resort. Principal photography began in January 1971. Conditions were hard; Pollack called the snows of St. George terrible and mortgaged his house to cover costs. On a 3.1 million dollar budget it grossed 44.7 million. In 1972 it became the first Western ever accepted into competition at Cannes. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 92 percent. Its strangest legacy now belongs to the internet: a GIF of Redford nodding became one of the most widely used reaction images online. Who it is for: viewers who like stories of solitude in the wilderness and slow Westerns. Who it is not for: anyone wanting action. For long stretches the film tells no story at all and simply shows a man staying alive.