Cheap The Ballad of Little Jo (DVD) (Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins) (Maggie Greenwald) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Ballad of Little Jo

A TRUE HIDDEN GEM!
Easily one of the best movies I have ever seen, hands down. A "sleeper", that I caught by accident late one night as I was channel surfing, yawning and stretching for bed. Within the first few minutes I was rivetted. The film features excellence at every possible level, from camera work, casting, script,set, acting and of course direction. This story in the wrong hands would have been a complete farce, but here we are treated to a story that is so believable (don't forget, it is based on a true story!) and gripping I still don't know how it is not a huge cult classic at the very least! This woman's life-story is told with dignity, patience and a fearless honesty that few movies can approach. The ending is particularly wonderful as are the love scenes between Little Jo and her Chinese lover. Most of my friends consider me a bit of a "foreign film snob", truth is I just dislike "Hollywood" movies and have always felt that there has for years always been so many wonderful movies made in other countries that we have little access too! In my opinion most of the time these films make US films look ridiculous. However, this film, Maggie Greenwald et al restored my faith in the possibility that good movies, good ART could be made in the United States of America.

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Feminist Western
A surprisingly lowkey, realistic journey of a woman who was determined to live outside the expectations heaped upon her. The "true story" it is in large part based on (along with two others, actually) is "Mountain Charley" an engrossing little tale of woman who lives as a man during the gold-rush years in Colorado and California. Both tales have harrowing episodes of gender violence, and tender moments of a life fulfilled on one's own terms.

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Feminist Western Works Well
The western had long been the last bastion of male supremacy for Hollywood. With THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO, director Maggie Greenwald presents the same hostile west that bedeviled John Wayne decades ago, but this time the protagnist is a woman named Josephine (Suzy Amis), who enters the movie as a well-to-do eastern lady who has the bad fortune to have an illegitimate baby. Her uncaring family casts her out, and Little Jo has no choice but to head west where she is subject to near rape. To protect herself, she disguises herself as a man. Now this may sound as if the film could easily turn into something as ludicrous as a western TOOTSIE, but it does not. Instead, Amis is totally convincing as a man who faces the same problems as if she were truly a man. Amis meets several men (Ian McKellen and Rene Auberjonois) who at first help her, then turn on her. She meets a Chinese man (David Chung), with whom she establishes first a friendly relation, then a physical one. By the film's end, Amis has proved that the gender of a settler is less important in securing her place in the west than is the determination that she shows. Heather Grahame does well in a secondary role, and newcomer Irina Passmoore also shines as two women, who in contrast to Little Jo, further stamp her as the first of the politically correct cowgirls.