Verdict
Summary
A strong dramatic western with an unusual perspective that makes it even more relevant today than perhaps when it was first released, The Ballad of Little Jo from writer / director Maggie Greenwald is more than the cult film is has been relegated as for the last 30 years, and should be discovered.
Plot:
A woman poses as a man in the Old West, thriving to a point, until her secret is found out.
Review:
Josephine Monaghan (Suzy Amis) flees her family in disgrace after an indiscretion with a photographer yields a pregnancy and a child, which she entrusts to her family to raise. She braves the Old West on her own, but soon finds herself the target of male predators who would take her by force and taken advantage of, but she just barely manages to get a foothold and her bearings by taking control of her destiny: She poses as a man named Jo, deliberately scars her face, and makes a go of it on her own, soon finding work as a sheepherder under the management of a rough and tumble landowner (played by Bo Hopkins) who is confounded by Jo’s elusive and aloof behavior, which goes against everything he understands. Years pass, and Jo saves enough capital to buy some land herself and live alone on a homestead where she manages to consider herself successful, but an imposed live-in arrangement with a Chinese outcast named Tinman Wong (David Chung) threatens to upend Jo’s long-held secret. After the arrangement with Tinman turns into a deep friendship, Jo lets her guard down and allows herself to fall into a kind of love with Tinman who discovers her secret, and they live together as a couple for a time until the years pass and Jo finds herself alone once more …
A strong dramatic western with an unusual perspective that makes it even more relevant today than perhaps when it was first released, The Ballad of Little Jo from writer / director Maggie Greenwald is more than the cult film is has been relegated as for the last 30 years, and should be discovered. I’d imagine that the film is fairly accurate in how it depicts men and women living in the west, and the incredibly harsh realities they faced, and the movie doesn’t shy away from showing and depicting that. Amis is good in a role that requires her to act like a man, and while she’s very slightly built and sort of resembles Michael J. Fox, I think the movie does her justice when it allows her to be feminine in the scenes where her character lets her guard down. It’s a solid film all the way to the end, and the movie has an authenticity that is rare and valuable.
Kino Lorber has just released The Ballad of Little Jo to Blu-ray in a new HD master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, and there’s an audio commentary with director Greenwald and the cinematographer, as well as an interview with Suzy Amis, and the trailer.
