Zandy's Bride

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 the term came in vogue with crime mysteries.

Gene Hackman is Zandy, 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 his wife Hannah arrives he effectively treats her as a slave and even forces himself on her. This is a story of how it was in the old days in the 19th century.

Liv Ullmann plays Hanna and she does not take it lying down and is determined to turn the farm into a home. Turn Zandy into someone respectable.

Susan Tyrell plays a floozy, Maria that Zandy seems to have had a past dalliance with. Zandy is wary of her, this is a clannish community with hints of inbreeding. Zandy 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 Zandy's family life.

If you think Zandy is bad, he is a progressive compared to his father. Zandy's mother is very much aware what Hannah is going through. She knows how hard life and her own husband has been to her.

Zandy and Hannah resolve to make their marriage work and she rewards him with issue. In turn Zandy softens a little, he gets her nice clothes and even a stove from San Francisco.

The film is a slow burn drama but it does not have 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 those roads.

The film is rewarded with wonderful photography but it feels empty despite the rich performances.

Overlooked and HIGHLY underrated.

Gene Hackman and Liv Ullman are both superb in this film. Gene Hackman's performance is especially noteworthy.

I saw ZANDY'S BRIDE years ago, shortly after it was first released. It stuck with me. It's even better than I remembered.

I had trouble hunting down a copy as it hasn't been released on DVD. Like another terrific film, THE GREY FOX, a DVD really should be produced. Locating a VHS copy was worth the effort.

I definitely recommend checking it out if you are a fan of either actor.

By 1974, when he was assigned ZANDY'S BRIDE, Swedish director Jan Troell had recently come into considerable fame as a hard-hitting, realistic portrayer of life in Sweden with his 1971 masterpiece, THE EMIGRANTS, starring Max von Sydow and the extremely beautiful Liv Ullmann.

Very wisely, Troell picked as male lead (Zandy) a facially non-descript actor, Gene Hackman, who also had recently risen to stardom with his Oscar for the role of Popeye Doyle in THE FRENCH CONNECTION. Hackman looks rugged and rough, the very type to raise cattle and live off the earth in 19th century rural USA, with little concern for social morés, a measure of respect for his father (whose wife treatment example he obviously endorses), and apparent disregard for his mother.

As the action goes, Zandy comes across a newspaper advert that a woman wishes to get married and he duly parts with $2 for a marriage license, and feels entitled to pretty much own the said woman to the point of slavery.

It is the dignity and self-respect of that woman, superlatively played by Ullmann, that spares her complete subjugation and captive status. Zandy sees her as a work mule and a womb to be fertilized so in time he can have male hands to help him around the farm. Nothing in Zandy's mindset detracts from the importance of money and of holding power over his woman.

No doubt feminists will find much to recriminate about ZANDY'S BRIDE, foremost the rape scene. As tragic and indefensible as his actions are, the fact that the film relates them so realistically and without pulling any punches should leave ashamed any man of any basic worth. They are a lesson on what to avoid in any relation with any human being, and in particular the female gender.

I have always found Ullmann one of the most beautiful women ever. Her eyes carry so much perseverance, determination, selflessness - and, ultimately, love - in this film that at times I felt I was in the same woodshed with her, watching her travails.

Excellent script, resting on sharp, clear and logical dialogue, by Forslund and Troell. Superb cinematography, especially of the countryside, including a memorably difficult horse ride by the sea.

Recommended viewing. 8/10.

Zandy's Bride is a unique film, in that its sense of realism is remarkably good. The character Hackman and Ullman portrayed are believable: strong, simple, independent, honery at times, solemn, determined to survive. Their portrayal is how I would have imagined earlier settlers in a harsh, and unforgiving environment to act.

I enjoy researching and reading about the common struggles of people throughout American history. All the more reason to give this film high praise, and again not because its tainted with Matrixisque, and any other high tech movie spillover, with its intense action, and depletion of substantive characterization. This film dealt with human conflict and the mistakes we consistently seem to make, before we are forced to face someone with whom we can trust and care for. This is one of the best films to watch in our day of complexity and lack of inspiration.. How and when can I watch it again, is my comment and question.

I had read the book, and was looking forward to the movie.

Happily, I wasn't disappointed.

Zandy's Bride is the story of an unsociable, uncivilised, isolated man who sends for a mail order bride.

He has little experience around women other than his mother and treats his new wife rather badly.

It is an interesting character study of two people thrown together, and how they adapt to their new life together.