David Denby

“I have no idea what the filmmaers thought they were saying in this picture, but I’m sure the only commercial element (if there’s any at all) will be the greening of Jane Fonda. As always, she creates her character with considerable physical detail. Her hard-pressed pioneer wears faded pants and plaids, her face is sunburned and leathery, and she has a gaunt, ravaged look—like an unhappy, worn-out woman in a Dorothea Lange photograph. A distant, hardened battler, she refuses to show any tenderness, or to receive any either. Fonda is a great actress, but this harsh performance is unbelievably solemn. Barbara Stanwyck used to play bitchy ranch-owner roles too, but Stanwyck, striding around in black skirts with a riding crop in her hand, suggested that she had more life in her than any man could handle—if only a few men would try. Her malice was freezing one minute, enticing the next. Fonda, on the other hand, just seems parched, depleted; she’s taken the fun out of the role without adding much depth.

“In any case, we can all see that Caan is so patient and sweetly masculine that she’s bound to turn toward him in the end. And sure enough, she does. But since this is a respectable, high-type Western, we’re not allowed to view the seduction, only the gravely tender morning after. Feminists may be offended by what happens next: Fonda lets her hair doesn, puts on a dress, and goes square dancing with Caan, a radiant-smile on her face. That return-to-life smile is an embarrassing cliché, yet it’s the only time anyone connected witht his grim and muddled movie tried to give the audience pleasure, and I was grateful for it.”

David Denby
New York, November 13, 1978