She doesn’t ride into town; she walks, dragging her baggage along with her. She has a name she’ll change and a past she can’t.

So opens Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo, a 1993 western that feels less like a revision and more like an extension. Jo (Suzy Amis) is the archetypal loner who doesn’t fit in, but unlike a lot of westerns where the narrative is driven as to why so-and-so is forbidden from “the blessings of civilization”—to borrow a phrase from Stagecoach—the audience spends most of The Ballad of Little Jo worried that those same blessings might ensnare and discover her.

And that’s because she is masquerading as a he. Greenwald shows this reasoning in succinct flashbacks while Josephine prepares her body to present as male: She fell in love, sired a child out of wedlock, and was banished from her family back East. So Josephine hits the road and partners briefly with a traveling salesman (Rene Auberjonois) who sells her to two ex-Union soldiers. Josephine escapes her pursuers and realizes the only way she’ll survive the frontier is to transform Josephine into Jo, complete with close-cropped hair and a self-provided scar running the length of her face. 

Jo lands in Ruby City—a muddy little shithole that must be the sister city of The Far Country’s Dawson—and pulls off her transformation. She learns to tend sheep for Frank Badger (Bo Hopkins), then builds her own little homestead. When she catches Frank tormenting a Chinese rail worker, Tinman (David Chung), she inadvertently ends up with a cook who becomes a companion. Jo protects Tinman from the drunken and rowdy bums of Ruby City, and he protects her secret.

Practically all westerns released after the 1960s spaghetti western boom get the label “revisionist” without much interrogation. Released in 1993 and written and directed by Greenwald, The Ballad of Little Jo looks a little and sniffs a little like a revisionist western, but Greenwald isn’t really subverting the mythology of the West or traditional masculine roles. Instead, Little Jo feels like an expansion of the canvas. Greenwald builds on previous films—notably McCabe and Mrs. Miller with the casting of Auberjonois and The Wild Bunch with Hopkins—to show that our previous notions of the so-called frontier have been much too narrow.

But Greenwald doesn’t stop there. The revelation of double-crossing men—Auberjonois’ traveling salesman and Ian McKellan’s Percy Corcoran—are more like obstacles than damns. They must be navigated but can be. Only Hopkins’ Frank Badger is allowed to develop. He takes a liking to Jo, but more like work colleagues rather than frat brothers. “Little Jo, you are the unfriendliest fella I ever met,” Badger spits out with a raised eyebrow. “And frankly, quite peculiar.” When Frank learns the truth of Little Jo, his emotions move swiftly from shock to anger to betrayal to, finally, exasperation. At this point in his life, he probably thought there were no more mysteries to uncover.

Reinvention has followed the conception of the American West like a bedfellow. Here, you can start again; be anyone you want to be. The Ballad of Little Jo writes that story in spades, and not about just burying your past or identity to survive but the freedom that comes from play. Josephine is playing at being a man and so allows herself to do things and say things she never would as a woman. Being Jo gives her strength. When she chastises Frank for mock hanging Tinman, she seems almost surprised that Frank releases him on her demand. While out with a bunch of wild and rowdy men, Jo pulls a gun on one when he gets too close and immediately smiles. Sure, it’s a throwback to Gary Cooper’s The Virginian—“You want to call me that, smile”—but there’s an air of danger to Cooper’s comment. When Jo pulls her gun on the man, her grin is much more playful. It’s an I-can’t-believe-I-just-did-that smirk.

The Ballad of Little Jo is a delight to discover, which is now easier than ever thanks to Kino Lorber’s new 4K scan from the original 35 mm negative. It’s available on Blu-ray and features a contemporary interview with Amis and a commentary track from Greenwald and cinematographer Declan Quinn.

The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)
Written and directed by Maggie Greenwald
Produced by Fred Berner, Brenda Goodman
Starring: Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins, Ian McKellen, David Chung, Heather Graham, Rene Auberjonois, Carrie Snodgress
Fine Line Features, Rated R, Running time 122 minutes, Opened Aug. 20, 1993.