475 The Shepherd of the Hills

[MichaelB]

THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS
(Henry Hathaway, 1941)
Release date: 20 January 2025
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK premiere)

Pre-order here.

Henry Hathaway (Go West Young Man) directs John Wayne (Jet Pilot), Betty Field (7 Women), Harry Carey (You and Me), and Beulah Bondi (Remember the Night) in the classic 1941 melodrama The Shepherd of the Hills.

When Daniel Howitt (Carey), a kindly stranger, arrives in a remote Ozark community riven by hatred, he befriends young Sammy (Field) and raises the ire of her fiancé, Matt (Wayne), a bitter moonshiner who has sworn to kill his own father.

Based on the best-selling novel by Harold Bell Wright, and boasting ravishing cinematography by Charles Lang (The Long Gray Line) and W Howard Greene (The Magnificent Seven), Hathaway’s version of The Shepherd of the Hills was the third of no fewer than four big-screen adaptations, and was Wayne’s first film in Technicolor.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with academic and curator Eloise Ross (2025)
• Bertrand Tavernier on ‘The Shepherd of the Hills’ (2017): archival appreciation by the celebrated filmmaker and critic, presented with English subtitles for the first time
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Rick Burin, an archival report on the film and source novel’s Ozark setting, an extract from an interview with Henry Hathaway, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and full film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies for the UK
• All features subject to change

#PHILE475B
BBFC cert: PG
REGION B
EAN: 5060697924824

[MichaelB]

Final specs:

[MichaelB]

The Beaver of the Hills.

[domino harvey]

This was a huge pleasant surprise for me. Other films of this backwoods ilk, including an earlier one by Hathaway himself, the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, are like nails on a moonshine jug to me but this film exists on another plane of existence than its kin. I think what makes this film succeed so fully is that it approaches the story and characters with total sincerity and seriousness-- there is no moment in which we are invited to laugh at or feel superior to the rubes on display, and yet the film does not make it easy for us to acclimate to their world. While the film eventually relents in inundating the audience with the sheer density of the community’s alien vernacular, it still front loads it to distance us even further from the actions of everyone. It was interesting to hear Tavernier frame his praise primarily around the visuals (and why would he not, there are three or four moments in this film as beautiful as any found in any other film of the period) because I kept thinking how utterly impossible it would be to even attempt to translate this dialog into another language, since it practically already is one.

I’m not a fan of Betty Field but she is uniquely suited to her role here and is never as unconvincing as seeing Gene Tierney or Sylvia Sidney try to pass themselves off as a dirt-clodded dame of the woods. It’s a strong performance. But surely the biggest surprise here is Marjorie Main, playing somehow both entirely within her conventional persona and yet fully apart from it with a quiet gentleness. But there are no bad perfs here, and all the Ford regulars could lead you to forget at times that this is a Hathaway picture instead.

As a side note, I loved how most of the film was clearly actually filmed on location, a realization encapsulated by the throwaway visual detail of ants crawling all over a counter in the general store. As odd as it sounds, I legit don’t think I’ve ever seen so simple an authentic detail in a studio picture before. And the film has quite a few startling visual moments like that, many much more forward and intentional. Surely this is a film born for Blu-ray, and it’s a great rescue job by Indicator

[Drucker]

Surely this is a film born for Blu-ray, and it’s a great rescue job by Indicator

Kino put it out several years ago, and I picked it up on Nick Pinkerton's recommendation, as he was raving about it. But a great film indeed!