#Film 🎞️ 🎥

[xtruss]

One of the Greatest Westerns Ever Made Is Now Streaming After Decades in the Wilderness

After Years of Inaccessibility, Maggie Greenwald's "The Ballad of Little Jo" Is Newly Available on Blu-Ray And Streaming — Here's Why That's a Cause For Celebration.

— By Jim Hemphill | March 25, 2024

'The Ballad of Little Jo'Fine Line Features

Throughout most of the 1980s the Western was assumed to be a dead genre, certainly compared to the central role it once played in Hollywood’s construction of a national mythology. While there were occasional outliers like Lawrence Kasdan‘s “Silverado” and Clint Eastwood‘s “Pale Rider,” for the most part the responsibility the genre had to reflect and shape American values was taken up by either science fiction movies like “The Terminator” (which fulfilled the Western’s function as an exploration of the changes wrought on society by evolving technology) or urban cop films like “48HRS.” and Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” sequels, which transposed the form’s archetypes and moral questions to a contemporary setting. Although the decade closed out with the successful “Young Guns,” that film was an anomaly whose success probably had more to do with its cast of attractive teen idols.

Then something funny happened in the early ’90s: Right as Hollywood seemed to have given up on the Western, it came roaring back with a vengeance and yielded the most varied, complex, and satisfying group of films since the glory days of John Ford and Delmer Daves. The box office and awards success of Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” in 1990, followed by Clint Eastwood’s triumphant return to the genre in 1992 with “Unforgiven,” suddenly made Westerns commercially viable again, and filmmakers who had been biding their time were able to will their dream projects into production. Lawrence Kasdan returned to the genre for the underrated and ambitious “Wyatt Earp,” Walter Hill made two of his best films with “Geronimo: An American Legend” and “Wild Bill,” and talented directors like Jim Jarmusch (“Dead Man”), Sam Raimi (“The Quick and the Dead”), and Melvin Van Peebles (“Posse”) made Westerns as different from each other — and as equally nourishing — as one might expect.

One of the best of the ’90s Westerns has also been one of the most difficult to see, but a special edition Blu-ray release in December and a streaming premiere this month have rescued it from years of inaccessibility. When writer-director Maggie Greenwald‘s “The Ballad of Little Jo” was released in 1993, its relationship to the other Westerns of the time was a bit of a coincidence — Greenwald had written the script before “Unforgiven” — but there’s no question that her film, like the best 1950s Westerns of Budd Boetticher, Howard Hawks, and Sam Fuller, benefited from the comparisons and contrasts enabled by being part of a recognizable tradition. Like those directors, Greenwald was brilliant at using the language of the Western as a shorthand, expressing her point of view not only by what she depicted and how but by where her treatment of the material paid tribute to the Westerns that had come before and where it deviated.

“The Ballad of Little Jo” is based on the true story of a society woman (played brilliantly by Suzy Amis in a performance that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath with James Stewart’s work in the Anthony Mann Westerns) who, shunned by her family after giving birth out of wedlock, rides West and reinvents herself as a man – Josephine Monaghan becomes “Little Jo” Monaghan, a successful sheep farmer who, like the characters in “Shane,” “Heaven’s Gate,” and dozens (hundreds?) of other earlier Westerns, defends her land against an evil corporation. Along the way, she sidesteps the advances of a young woman who sees her as a potential husband and carries on a romance with a Chinese laborer (the only person who knows her true gender) while becoming friends with a guide and mentor named Badger, played by Bo Hopkins in a role that can’t help but evoke associations with Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.”

The casting of Hopkins gives the viewer a clue to what Greenwald is up to, as she slyly references and honors not only Peckinpah but a whole history of American Westerns at the same time that she finds new directions for the genre. Much as Hopkins retains the strengths of his performances in Westerns like “The Wild Bunch,” “The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing,” and “The Culpepper Cattle Co.” while also revealing new layers of sensitivity, the film as a whole delivers the satisfactions of Westerns — “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Gunfighter,” “Shane” — that explore both the liberation of a life defined by rugged individualism and its limitations, but deepens and expands on the mythology. Part of this is inherent in the premise, and most of it is due to Greenwald’s probing intelligence and unerring visual sense.

Suzy Amis, 1993, “The Ballad of Little Jo”©Fine Line Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Most Westerns are about masculinity and how America defines what it means to “be a man,” and many of the best entries in the genre have been films that delve into the contradictions and complexities of the question. By telling the story of a woman who lives her life as a man in the old West, Greenwald explores traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity through a different lens than just about every other Western ever made, even ostensibly female-driven works like “Bad Girls” and “The Quick and the Dead” which, while both have considerable strengths, don’t really engage with the issue on a deep level. Like most Westerns, “The Ballad of Little Jo” takes place in a world where maleness is glorified as a source of power and progress, a fact that Greenwald sharply interrogates via the unique perspective Little Jo’s character provides. Greenwald asks the viewer to consider and reconsider ideas many Westerns (and American films in general) take for granted by posing two simple questions: What does Little Jo gain by becoming a man, and what does she lose?

Greenwald uses familiar conventions both the traditional way and with a spin that gives them a whole new dimension. One of the hoariest cliches in the Western, for example, is that of the “redemptive woman,” the schoolmarm or minister’s sister who exists in the movie to civilize the hero and help him assimilate into society. In “Little Jo,” the redemptive woman is a man, but by making him Chinese — and therefore “lesser” and isolated in the eyes of the white men in the film — Greenwald plays with ideas of power, gender, race, and economics (Jo’s lover works as her handyman) and explores how they intersect in fluid and fascinating ways. The ways in which the viewer is expected to understand these issues are irrevocably affected by seeing them through the eyes of a woman who is pretending to be a man; long before the end of the movie, the line between “male” virtues and “female” ones — a defining feature of many classical Westerns — has been satisfyingly and provocatively blurred.

The pleasures of the film are not merely or even primarily ideological; part of Greenwald’s greatness is how organically woven into the narrative these ideas are. There’s nothing anachronistic about the film, even though, like all great period movies, it’s an equally valuable reflection of the time in which it takes place, the time of its release, and the time in which you’re watching it. Greenwald has the confidence not to force or overstate her ideas but just sets the drama in motion and lets the audience draw their own conclusions.

From left, Rene Auberjonois, Suzy Amis, 1993, “The Ballad of Little Jo” ©Fine Line Features/courtesy Everett/Everett Collection

She also provides a textured and expressive visual experience for the viewer that makes “The Ballad of Little Jo” one of the most purely gorgeous independent films of its era, and also a Western with a distinct look. Other directors had taken pleasure in the small details and nuances of day-to-day living in the old West — Robert Altman in “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” Walter Hill in “The Long Riders,” Budd Boetticher in his detailed depictions of what it really meant to be a cowboy tending to a horse — but Greenwald takes it as far as anyone ever did, focusing not only on where Little Jo lives, but how and why, and how the simultaneously beautiful and forbidding landscape informs her choices. The movie is filled with specific pieces of costume and production design that allow the viewer to ponder the frontier existence in all its particulars, not just its sweeping vistas; it’s an intimate approach that perfectly complements Greenwald’s efforts for us to see everything through Jo’s perspective.

At the same time, “The Ballad of Little Jo” has a sweeping, epic quality that belies its limited budget, as well as a giddy embrace of some of the Western’s most basic pleasures. When Little Jo, in a sense, “conquers” her territory and succeeds on both her own terms and society’s, it’s immensely satisfying, and her sense of freedom is intoxicating. Yet just as Gregory Peck in “The Gunfighter” or the guns for hire in “The Magnificent Seven” are trapped in their roles, Jo is trapped by successfully becoming a man — she can’t escape her role any more than Steve McQueen could escape his. Greenwald ends the film with an allusion to another great Western, John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” with her own take on the idea that “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Like everything else in the film, Greenwald’s perspective on this topic is complex, ambivalent, and, to a degree, open-ended, inviting the audience to continue the discussion after the film is over.

In a sense, Greenwald is doing what the best Western directors have always done despite the “revisionist” label erroneously attached to the ’90s films in the genre. The best Western directors have always been revisionist — John Ford cleverly subverted the idea of the redemptive woman back in 1939, for example, when he made her a prostitute in the same movie where he made the villain the most extreme representative of capitalist philosophy. Like “Stagecoach” — or “Red River,” or “High Noon,” or “Buck and the Preacher,” or any of the other all-time great Westerns — “The Ballad of Little Jo” looks both back and forward.

Also like those films, it’s a singular personal statement. Given that Greenwald was the first woman to write and direct a wide-release American Western in the sound era, it’s hard not to draw parallels between her own journey and Little Jo’s, forging her way forward in a male-dominated field and choosing what to retain and what to discard — and like her heroine, showing everyone else how it’s done. One doesn’t need to know anything about Greenwald or the production history of her film or even its context as a ’90s Western to enjoy it, though; it stands on its own as a masterpiece that has always deserved to be better known and more easily accessed. Its renewed availability is a cause for celebration and an opportunity to rediscover an American classic.

“The Ballad of Little Jo” is currently streaming at Kino Film Collection and is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

[urannos]

quem aqui gosta de filme de terror? vamos fazer clubinho para assistir????

[sugiiis]

Safe to say, I think she liked it. 🪼🐠

📸Tagged: @idezaireu

[groovyfilmmaker]

( 🍿 ) . . hi! my name is Oliver or Alex, but you can also call me any nicknames that you can up with.

( 🍿 ) . . I'm around 20-25 years old in-sys. I might reblog some suggestive stuff, so do with that info what you will.

( 🍿 ) . . I use he/they pronouns, although I prefer he/him over they/them.

( 🍿 ) . . I am a transman, and I am a fictive and part of a system and I have auDHD.

( 🍿 ) . . I love talking with sprites, so if that bothers you, I'd advise you not to follow me, I'm sorry.

( 🍿 ) . . I will most likely reblog most of the time, but when I talk, it'll be most likely about my boyfriends, about my source, or about filmmaking and all that stuff.

( 🍿 ) . . my interests mostly consist of my source, filmmaking, and romantic stuff, but other things might be sprinkled in here, like trans stuff, and gay stuff.

( 🍿 ) . . fuck it, I'm stealing most tags from my bf.

#🎥 . . . filming ! [ < talk tag ]

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#💬 . . . review ! [ < ask tag ]

#💌 . . . love letters ! [ < boyfriends tag ]

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#📽️ . . . editing ! [ < art tag ]

#🥤 . . . cutscenes ! [ < aesthetic tag ]

#🎞️ . . . yelling ! [ < important tag ]

#🎟️ . . . healing herbs ! [ < comfort tag ]

#📷 . . . key items ! [ < things that ppl tagged me in ]

#📹 . . . view party ! [ < friend tag ]

#🎬 . . . olive dlc ! [ < dt oc tag ]

#🎢 . . . best routes ! [ < comfort character ]

#🎉 . . . hoard of nonsense ! [ < mogai hoard tag ]

#🧨 . . . happy machine broke ! [ < vents and not happy things ]

[ozgur-ce]

Gece gece paylaşmasam olmazdı 🖤👻 Bugün günlerden Bettlejuice'tu hatırlayanlar el kaldırsın 🙋🏻‍♀️Çoook sevmiştim ilk filmini özellikle de videoya eklediğim film müziğini hatta Türkçe sözlerle coverladılardı, çok eğlenceli bu müziği de hatırlayanlar olacaktır 😉 Neyse 2. si çıkınca Beter böceğe gitmesem yine olmazdı, yine çok eğlendim ben, bir fantastik filmsever olaraktan 👻🖤🎃🪄

Filme extradan Monica Bellucci aplamız ve yeni jenerasyon bilir wednesday Jenna Ortega renk katmış 🖤 Siz de benim gibi film, sinema seviyorsanız size küçük bir video hazırladım izleyelim bakalım 🖤🎥🎬🎞️📽️

[mercurycft]

𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐋𝐀𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐇 — 𝐊𝐌 | ꒱ ₊˚ˑ༄

## social media | katie mccabe & awfc !!

september 18th 2023 — 📸

🔔 yourusername posted to instagram.

yourusername tagged arsenalwfc & 15 others in this post.

liked by bethmead_, jbeattie91, stepcatley, katie_mccabe11, arsenalwfc and 89,754 others.

yourusername : arsenal wfc on film 🎞️🤍🎥

posted 9 hours ago.

tap to view all 43 comments

arsenalwfc: lights, camera, ACTION! ❤️

katie_mccabe11: why has my tan disappeared???

^ yourusername: you’re still tanned bby dw <3

^ y/n.mccxbe: HOLY SHIT

^ awfc.gunner: OH MY GOOOODDDDD

leahwilliamsonn: NL is RED! ❤️

^ yourusername: as it should be!

jbeattie91: look at my bun poking over everyone 🤣

^ yourusername: buns for dayyyyys 🗣️

awfclw66: literally my favourite people ever

^ yourusername: ❤️

^ awfclw66: OMG

september 20th 2023 — 📸

🔔 katie_mccabe11 posted to their story

september 21st 2023 — 📸

🔔 yourusername posted to instagram.

yourusername tagged katie_mccabe11 in this post

liked by katie_mccabe11, bethmead_, leahwilliamsonn, arsenalwfc and 98,537 others.

yourusername : happy birthday, old woman. i love you. heres to many, many more ❤️💐🥳 xxx

posted 4 hours ago.

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📍 katie_mccabe11: glad i’ve got you ❤️ i love you

leahwilliamsonn: way to break the internet 😭

^ yourusername: my phone is breaking

arsenal.wfc211: OMG HARDLAUNCHHARDLAUNCH

^ awfcg0nner: THE SEASON IS UPON US

bethmead_: my favourites 🤍

^ yourusername: love you beffy xxx

arsenalwfc: ♍️ virgo season

^ katie_mccabe11: aka the BEST season!

september 22nd 2023 — 📸

🔔 katie_mccabe11 posted to instagram

yourusername was tagged in this post

liked by yourusername, bethmead_, arsenalwfc, stephcatley, jbeattie91 and 52,137 others.

katie_mccabe11 : one whole year of not hating your guts, even if you are too messy. i love you ❤️

posted 2 hours ago

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📍 yourusername: a whole year of your loud, loud mouth. love you 🤍 also my post got more likes than yours 😚 xx

^ katie_mccabe11: yeah yeah, whatever you say

arsenalwfc: all been holding our breath for 365 days

^ yourusername: ❤️

^ katie_mccabe11: is this teamcest??

——————

read ‘soft launch’ here! x

hey pookies!! i bet you all weren’t expecting another post so quick ;) i really enjoy making these! please let me know what other players you would like to see! i have work all of tomorrow morning, but i will get around to requests & messages this! weekend! i promise :)) happy reading & love always! 🤍 - RG x

[cinevoyageuses]

🎥 "One day a wise man told me that you were a real miracle. I should have listened to him." Warrior Nun (2020-...)

Episode 1x10 - Revelations 2:10

🎬 The filming location: We take you to the Real Fábrica de Tabacos at the University of Seville. Some small scenes of episode 1x09 - Corinthians 10:4 took place indoors but the biggest takes place outdoors, in the final episode, in the first two courtyards of the main entrance of the building.

🎞️ Warrior Nun is one of our favorites of 2020, so when we saw that the most epic scene of season 1 took place in Seville we jumped at the chance 😁

Did you watch the show? We hope Simon Barry will find it a new home ♥️

-

🎥 "Un jour, un homme sage m'a dit que tu étais un véritable miracle. J'aurais dû l'écouter." Warrior Nun (2020-...)

Episode 1x10 - Révélations 2:10

🎬 Le lieu de tournage : On vous emmène à la Real Fábrica de Tabacos à l'Université de Séville. Quelques petites scènes de l'épisode 1x09 - Corinthiens 10:4 se sont déroulées à l'intérieur mais le plus gros se passe en extérieur, dans l'episode final, dans les deux premières cours de l'entrée principale du bâtiment.

🎞️ Warrior Nun est un de nos coups de coeur 2020, alors quand on a vu que la scène la plus épique de la saison 1 s'est déroulée à Séville on a sauté sur l'occasion 😁

Vous avez regardé la série ? On espère que Simon Barry lui trouvera une nouvelle maison ♥️

Follow us on Instagram for more filming locations: cinevoyageuses

[taylorrussellsgf]

Taylor Russell’s favorite films 🎥🎞️

[dnpanimationstudioclone]

Mimzy Redesign🐤

Made my own take on Mimzy for fun! Something I’ve always loved with her design is her body type! I also love her dress having film tape on her dress to connect her being a Hollywood gal.

For my take, instead of being a chicken which I read she was suppose to be vaguely based on, I went with a canary! As they’re known for their great singing voices🐤 Plus it would make her whole rivalry with Husk like Tweedy and Sylvester🤣🤣🤣

For her colors I’d deepened her pink to a more plum color as that was a popular color for flappers and looks glamorous(also read it can make u look younger and I imagine she’d want to look young) I can imagine she’s someone self conscious about that. Plus plums close to wine like colors which would also connect her a bit to Alastor who has red 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷

Also added gold, a gray vintage vibe. Since she’s a canary, but also to show how she’s from a time that was considered, “the Golden Age of America” and also give off her being a woman who enjoys the golden glamour of the Hollywood lifestyle🎞️🎥⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Made her jewelry more a dark gold and added egg shaped beads for the bird theme 🥚

I read for 20’s hair, it was closer to the head so I made it more like a bob which was a popular look back then! Here’s a pick of Colleen Moore, a popular Hollywood actress and flapper girl!

Gave her a feather boa. For the bird and Hollywood glam vibe!

Also added straps on her dress.

Gave her more of a torso and neck. I’ll be honest, I’ve always been more attached to her Concept Design.

Added a film reel on her head decoration to go with the film tape on her dress 🎥 🎞️

What do u think? How would u design Mimzy? I’d love to know💖

[xtruss]

Fashion Designer Alana Hadid, Sister to Well-Renowned Models Bella and Gigi, is leading the charge at Watermelon Pictures, a film production and distribution label.

Described on its website as a "Palestinian-owned independent film distribution, production, and financing" company, Watermelon Pictures is committed to cultural representation, social advocacy, and amplifying the voices of underrepresented filmmakers worldwide.

[spatialwave]

film school limoreau. 🎥🎞️

- marie and jordan would start in the same year together, but come from different levels of background knowledge. jordan would have gone to a secondary school where they had film programs and money to develop their own projects. marie would have all of her knowledge self-taught, from watching youtube videos and spending every night analyzing her favourite films — never really able to successfully film a solid project.

- they would have their differences, with jordan being a bit snobbier than marie would like. she’s a fan of b-roll films and cult classics, whereas jordan is a fan of big names and big pictures.

- they come together because of their obsession over one movie: everything everywhere all at once. it’s mentioned in class once and the two of them both interrupt the discussion at the same time, eyes locking — realizing that maybe they weren’t so annoying as they thought.

- marie is abundant in creativity, enjoying scribbling down story plots on random pieces of paper and sketching storyboards for hours. jordan is more meticulous with their planning, but still able to see the big picture of things and prefers to solidify scripts.

- marie likes to set up shots, light them and make them look pleasing to the eye. jordan likes to direct, get the actors into their headspace and nitpick when editing.

- they both fucking hate audio capture, but it’s where they bond. they realize it’s a weakness they both have and they partner up on certain assignments, finding themselves growing closer with each breakdown about how to compress audio or how to creatively capture foley.

- jordan realizes they’ve fallen hard for marie when she acts in a short film for them. they’re behind the camera, setting up a shot where marie’s character is sitting under a spotlight — a dramatic piece that’s set for an inner monologue. as she stares in the camera, popping her lips together and asking jordan how the framing looks… they’re rendered speechless.

- jordan spent a lot of time editing that project because they’d get lost staring at marie on screen.

- one of their classmates (emma) would ask marie and jordan to act in her short romance film. they’d have a kiss scene that they both act like they don’t care about, but the kiss looked so real and passionate that emma ‘forgot’ to record so they could do it a couple more times.

- the two of them would be dating by the end of their degree. they’d share a passion of making major production films together, starting with indie films they’d submit to festivals as a director (jordan) and cinematographer (marie).

- the two of them would become a powerhouse couple, eventually, making names for themselves as the unstoppable force behind filmmaking.

[sugiiis]

Date night. @sincerelyaudri 💐

[searching4wisdom-blog]

These past two Eras Tour shows in Lyons, France seemed to be very Haylor coded. My first thoughts:

Lyon = Lion, and Lyin'

I think Taylor's screaming the truth, however no one can "hear/see" it...

Lion:

loml CODES to Harry's Love Of My Life

Oh, what a valiant roar 🐯

What a bland goodbye

The coward 🏳️ claimed

he was a lion 🦁

I'm combing through the braids of lies

"I'll never leave" ...

"Never mind"

Wildest Dreams MV:

Has a FILM 🎥 camera, just like how the road unrolls like film 🎞️ at the beginning of Female Rage: The Musical 🎼🖤🎬🤍💔🎶🏳️🛸

Wildest Dream, 1989 connects to Glitch by sharing the Spotify visuals

This makes GLITCH CODE TO WILDEST DREAMS...1989, who we all know the MUSE was HARRY.

sorry not yelling, just enunciating as a way to highlight the CODING, think of it as a Map Legend...🌎🌍🌏

[alwaysklako]

Nach einem halben Jahr des Vormichhinköchelns in meinem stillen Kämmerlein traue ich mich endlich, „Wie im Film“ zu teilen, eine AU-Geschichte, in der Joko und Klaas zu Schauspielern werden und sich beim Dreh einer queeren RomCom kennen (*hust*und*hust*lieben*hust*) lernen 🎬🎥🎞️

Wer diese fluffige, romantisch-witzige Reise begleiten möchte, darf mir gerne einmal auffällig oder unauffällig hier entlang folgen ⬇️

[gacmediadaily]

@jessicalowndes - Fresh highlights with @thebiacollective 👩🏻‍🎨🎨🩷 Ready to film my new movie this week! ✈️ 🎥 🎞️ #soexcited #cantwait

[filmwoe]

Movie Review 🎥🎞️

The Haunted House (1921)

I quite like this one. It’s definitely in my top favorite shorts of his. I don’t know why but I really like having a spooky theme in silent films. But his stunts were really funny (especially the stairs stunts 😂).

Letterboxd rating: 4 out of 5 stars