听 
Following their work on the splendid restoration of Donald Cammell's "Wild Side", "The Hired Hand" editor Frank Mazzola and distributor Hamish McAlpine have again teamed up to bring an undervalued classic into the limelight.
After years of roaming, and, being on the heels of bad trouble in the remote desert, Harry Collings (Fonda) decides to return to the wife and child he left behind to pursue his nomadic wanderings. His wife, Hannah (Bloom) at first refuses to accept him and orders him to sleep in the barn alongside his friend and fellow saddle tramp Arch Harris (Oates).
Collings works the slowly prospering farm as a hired hand and as his respect for his wife's independence grows, their romance rekindles. Arch, who has developed romantic feelings of his own, makes a graceful exit. But the peace and renewed intimacy is short-lived. The bad trouble comes full circle when Arch is taken hostage by the thugs they offended and Collings is forced to abandon his wife and child for a second time to ride to Arch's rescue.
Handsomely shot by Vilmos Szigmond, the film begins with one of the most beautiful sequences in film history. Fonda refuses to force the action and captures sensitive, moving turns from the terrific Oates and a performance from Bloom that caused Fonda's sister Jane to declare her brother had made a feminist western.
A work dear to Fonda's heart, he has often spoken of his wish for this film to be his epitaph. It's one that would do any director proud.
