The advent of Rudy Wurlitzer’s long-awaited new novel The Drop Edge of Yonder (an early draft of which Jim Jarmusch ripped off for Dead Man, apparently) has me pondering all things Western—from the Lone Ranger radio series to El Topo and the Blueberry comics to Blood Meridian to PT Anderson’s recent masterpiece There Will Be Blood.

For the record, my five favorite film Westerns are High Noon, For a Few Dollars More, The Hired Hand, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Of these, The Hired Hand is probably the least well known.

Peter Fonda’s directorial debut is a lyrical, quiet, and quite moving, piece of work. Warren Oates, Vera Bloom, and Fonda himself all turn in terrific, understated performances. It has a haunting soundtrack (after I first saw the film, I whistled its theme for days), is beautifully well photographed by then-newcomer Vilmos Zsigmond (who would later lens pictures like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate), and is edited to sometimes stunning effect by Frank Mazzola (whose montage sequences are featured in Nicolas Roeg’s Performance). All in all, it's a lovely little film. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend adding it to your Netflix queue for a lonely evening.