There are really nice things here. Duvall taken by the spirit and delivering visions of Yankee raids; his sycophant brother following him even to the toilet; Luke Askew's missing lip; the old woman pronouncing doom in cryptic rhyme; Duvall's escape in drag; Robertson shot 16 times. But Kaufman apparently didn't have the chops to know that Bruce Surtees was quietly destroying what could have been a pretty good little art picture.
What should be a semi-psychedelic fever dream of distorted Americana looks like a drunken episode of Bonanza, crowded/blurry/badly framed two-shots all in brown. Half the film takes place in the woods, in Missouri, and it's not even green. The whole movie seems to have been shot with a single lens. Even the credits appear cheap and dated. No question, this movie looks as low-end and made-for-TV as any Aldrich or McLaglen Western of the same period. LONG RIDERS, a later, more traditional and visually interesting James Gang movie by Walter Hill, certainly is slicker in delivery.
But NORTHFIELD, for all its art-school faults, at least reaches toward transcendence. In Kaufman's writing and direction is an attempt to commandeer the drive-in horse opera formula and ride it into 70s ambiguity. The bad guy heroes are sort of unheroic; the Pinkertons are a cartoon counterpoint; the dialogue is occasionally quite choice. But while this is my favorite screen investigation of Jesse James, the film as a whole does not rise above its weaknesses.
What should be a semi-psychedelic fever dream of distorted Americana looks like a drunken episode of Bonanza, crowded/blurry/badly framed two-shots all in brown. Half the film takes place in the woods, in Missouri, and it's not even green. The whole movie seems to have been shot with a single lens. Even the credits appear cheap and dated. No question, this movie looks as low-end and made-for-TV as any Aldrich or McLaglen Western of the same period. LONG RIDERS, a later, more traditional and visually interesting James Gang movie by Walter Hill, certainly is slicker in delivery.
But NORTHFIELD, for all its art-school faults, at least reaches toward transcendence. In Kaufman's writing and direction is an attempt to commandeer the drive-in horse opera formula and ride it into 70s ambiguity. The bad guy heroes are sort of unheroic; the Pinkertons are a cartoon counterpoint; the dialogue is occasionally quite choice. But while this is my favorite screen investigation of Jesse James, the film as a whole does not rise above its weaknesses.