Intimate on a narrative level and epic in visual scope, the 1976 film Bound for Glory is a supreme piece of American filmmaking, centering on one of the country’s most despairing time periods, filled with all of the small but vital humanistic touches that defined the work of director Hal Ashby. David Carradine delivered nothing less than a tour de force performance as folk singer Woody Guthrie, who traveled the country looking for fortune and fame during the Great Depression. With a colorful supporting cast including Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, Randy Quaid, and John Lehne, there’s never a dull moment, even if the film moves at a purposefully languid clip. But because Ashby took his time with this story, you get all the more invested in Guthrie’s plight and his desire to get a leg up in the world; the sequence where he gets to show his family their new house is nothing short of misty-eyed touching without veering into the overly sentimental. This was the first movie to employ the use of the Steadicam, with inventor Garrett Brown handling the operation, and the legendary Haskell Wexler calling the shots as cinematographer (he’d win the Oscar for his bronzed and beautiful work on this film). This film also features a few bar fights and train brawls that are some of the best staged sequences of cinematic beat-downs that I’ve ever seen; punches fly with vigor in this movie! There’s also a fascinating hobo component to the movie, with a majority of the picture highlighting the hardscrabble life of desperate men living in one of the most desperate of times in America; while beautiful looking, there’s an emotional harshness that permeates most of the scenes. Bound for Glory would be nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Editing, but would only take the statues for Wexler’s groundbreaking photography and an Oscar for Best Original Score. The DVD that Netflix shipped was, sadly, presented in non-anamorphic widescreen, but never fear — Twilight Time is releasing the film on Blu-ray this year, along with another classic Ashby title, The Last Detail. Time may have forgotten about Bound for Glory, but viewers shouldn’t; it makes for an excellent companion piece to The Grapes of Wrath and is a further reminder of the genius that was Hal Ashby.
Podcasting Them Softly 