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No one who has ever lived or worked in the Borough of the Bronx could be favorably impressed by Dustin Hoffman's characterization of Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz. Hoffman's attempt at a Bronx accent is so clumsy, so unconvincing it is painful to listen to. The actor playing the title role was little seen after this. Not hard to see why. Nice enough looking with fair coloration but a cipher, communicating only emptiness as the male ingenue. The actress playing his disapproving, Irish-born mother shows more depth in her single, ninety second scene than does Travis in the whole hour and forty minutes.

In 2016 after years of waiting, Criterion Collection has released this two-part epic in Blu-Ray and standard DVD. For fullest effect, the two segments should be played as in the original, theatrical release: "The Emigrants" entirely in Swedish (with English subtitles), "The New Land" in English. It is in itself quite an achievement that the cast of both is virtually identical yet are competent in the new and old languages. Scandinavian immigrants to the Minnesota Territory in the 1850's--before the US Civil War-- found conditions both familiar and alien. The cold climate was like their native land but the soil of the New World was more fertile and not so stony. It was a place of open spaces and vast pine forests, few towns and no cities to compare with Stockholm or Oslo.

In the story, friendships are tested, some broken over issues of religion. Family life isn't always smooth or predictable. There are generational conflicts. Historical events are alluded to such as the Civil War or depicted, if briefly, like the 1862 uprising of the Eastern Sioux, starving on their Minnesota reservation, with deadly attacks on surrounding settlements until put down by the US Army. Yet the Indian side of the conflict is given play, also, with the emigrants coming to understand that The New Land had belonged to others before them.