The Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell pulled off the unprecedented feat of making two back-to-back three-hour epics (THE EMIGRANTS and THE NEW LAND) that chronicled his countrymen's experiences setting down roots in America, and received US distribution from Warner Bros. and multiple Oscar nominations for his troubles. For his follow-up, Warner Bros. gave Troell studio resources to make a real American film, a tart character study of a Big Sur homesteader (Gene Hackman) who gives his mail-order wife (Liv Ulmann) a crash course in the realities of her new homeland.

35mm Technicolor print courtesy of the Chicago Film Society