In her New Yorker review of Lamont Johnson's sublime "Cattle Annie and Little Britches" (1981), Pauline Kael commented on Amanda Plummer's screen debut as being "scarily brilliant."That was enough to whet the appetites of all cinéphiles - and also end Plummer's promising film career. No one wanted a starlet who was "scarily brilliant," least of all audiences in the early 1980s.
The similarly brilliant Kristy McNichol was also a victim of the times, although perhaps for additional reasons. Anyway, Plummer never had much of a film career. Our loss, indeed.
"Cattle Annie and Little Britches" is an eccentric little saddle-soap saga about two teenagers, 19th-century variety, in thrall of outlaws. Times haven't changed. I suppose that anarchic musicians have been contempoary outlaws for the past 50 years or so.
The girls, in this case, are Plummer's Cattle Annie and Diane Lane's Jenny, who is dubbed "Little Britches" by the leader of Doolin-Dalton gang, Bill Doolin himself - played by Burt Lancaster, no less.
In what is clearly a teenage girl's wet dream, sagebrush-style, Cattle Annie and Little Britches play a crucial role in helping Doolin-Dalton gang save Bill from jail time before being sent off to a reformatory themselves.
This is essentially "The World of Henry Orient," only with horses, and it's irresistible.
The supporting cast includes Rod Steiger, John Savage and, of course, Scott Glenn, but the real driving force here is director Lamont Johnson, who paid his dues doing TV movies (including the fine televison film version of the play, "My Sweet Charlie") before seguing into films with such titles as "The Mackenzie Break" (1970), "A Gunfight" (1971), Jeff Bridges' "The Last American Hero" (1973) and "Somebody Killed Her Husband" (1978), starring Farrah and Bridges and criminally underrated.
Johnson died on October 24, 2010 at 88 and what do you wanna bet that he'll be forgotten during the In Memorium segment of this year's Oscars?
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