MovieChat Forums > Jeremiah Johnson (1972) Discussion > The 100 yard dash

The 100 yard dash

posted 11 years ago by captainsteroid
4 replies | jump to latest

In some Hollywood movies, A murder is about to take place, there's a fight, or someone is about to leap off a bridge. Our hero is driving to the scene. But he doesn't drive up to the spot. He stops the car 300 feet too soon. Gets out and runs the last 100 yards. This is supposed to add some action, or tension. ( will he make it in time?)

In Jeremiah Johnson, they did the same thing. Jeremiah has been riding hard to the cabin. But does he ride straight up to the doorway? No. Instead, he gets off and is forced to run a hundred yards, through the trees and brush, to the cabin door, to find his family murdered. The old 100 yard dash.

This explains the loss of the bear skin coat, in my last post. Redford wouldn't look heroic, running in a coat like that, or able to show his grief, bundled in fur.

[–] tenantennae 11 years ago

...in weather like that

It wasn't as cold at the cabin. Lower altitude. Jeremiah and co. are dressed in light clothing when the soldiers first arrive, and the sun is shining.

He wears it in the snowy mountains, where it's obviously freezing, but after he got back down, it makes sense he would have taken it off again.

As he runs to the cabin , his shirt is soaked with sweat, so it's clearly way too warm to be wearing the same coat he wore high up in the ice and snow.

The coat may have been stowed somewhere on his horse like the rest of his gear, or maybe he cast it off when it got too warm, since he was in such a hurry.

As for the run, there are a bunch of felled trees between the place where he dismounts and the cabin. Faster for him to jump around them than trying to maneuver his horse over them.

[–] nutsberryfarm 9 years ago

this song would have been great @ that moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur8ftRFb2Ac



"Hipness is not a state of mind, it's a fact of life!" - Cannonball Adderley

[–] SirGuySirLot 11 years ago

I think the dash was for stealth. He could make less noise approaching the cabin (in case the indians were still in the area) on foot rather than horseback.

Either way, it ramps up the tension and anticipation.

[–] Etherdave 10 years ago

The film was made in 1972, a time when, it could easily be argued, what might today be considered a timeworn cliché of Hollywood film, was then considered a time-honored dramatic trope not quite yet played out.

Let us move forward in time a little, to a disgraced and proscribed Roman General who, dashing home on horseback in a vain attempt to save his family, completes the last bit of his voyage on foot. In other words, the old 100 yard dash. Again. In a film made over a quarter century after the one being analyzed here. Clearly the trope, or if you prefer, the cliché, is still not considered quite played out.

Admittedly, the supposedly-more-modern production incorporates some refinements; the horse may well have died under Maximus, necessitating his old 100 yard dash, which itself has been neatly reduced to a far-less-dramatic, far-less-inconveniant dozen yards; not bad for a horse that has been pushed at a mad gallop across most of Western Europe. The film was duly acclaimed and awarded, timeworn, or time-honored, tropes and clichés notwithstanding, and only a paltry few ever complained about that horse, or that dash. So much for clichés and tropes.