When the hardboiled late 19th-century rancher Zandy (Gene Hackman) decides to take a mail-order bride, he isn’t especially interested in love; instead, he wants a woman who can bear his child and aid him in the daily struggles of country living, whether tending cattle or fighting off grizzly bears. But when his new bride Hannah (Ullmann) arrives by stagecoach from Minnesota, she is anything but compliant, with a headstrong attitude that immediately clashes with Zandy’s coarse personality, and with a will of her own for a life out west.

As the pair struggles to negotiate their mutual disappointments, Hannah is forced to endure Zandy’s mistreatment amid the hard life of the frontier, while Zandy must learn to accept his new bride as a person, rather than as a simple transaction. And though love was not part of the equation for either of them, when hardship hits and they must struggle together for survival, they build a grudging and fitful mutual respect.

Zandy’s Bride is based on Lillian Bos Ross’ novel The Stranger and adapted by screenwriter Marc Norman (winner of the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love). Directed by Jan Troell (U.S., 1974)

Jan Troell (b. July 1931) is known as one of Sweden’s best directors and cinematographers for such internationally acclaimed films as

Here Is Your Life (1966), The Emigrants (1971), The New Land (1972), and Il capitano (1991). He is married to Agneta Ulfsäter-Troell.