Director: Lambert Hillyer
Cast: William S. Hart, Jane Novak, Robert McKim, Lloyd Bacon
Have I Seen it Before: Never.
Did I Like It: I get it. I’m supposed to like every silent film equally, owing to the fact that the most nostalgic one person can be is being wistful for things that happened decades before their own birth. That’s why I’ll show up to pretty much any silent movie projected for a crowd…
But this? I don’t know. I really don’t. The few westerns I’ve seen from the era at the very least are possessed of the breathless action that can make silent films just as watchable today as it was when they were released. Here, though, the proceedings are glacial. One might be able to forgive that, but the cardinal sin in this film is that for some reason its nearly obsessively talky. Why make a film at all prior to The Jazz Singer (1927) if you’re just going to talk to me the whole time? Were people just so starved for entertainment immediately after World War I that they would take just anything? No wonder we couldn’t just keep things together for more than a few years.
All right. Maybe this film isn’t for me. There are going to be any number of westerns that fail to garner my interest. If you’re one of those types that… I dunno… do the absolutely insane thing of purchasing a horse, you may be prepared to dismiss my opinions and seek out the film for yourself. I’m sorry for most of your life choices, but I’d be remiss to not tell you that this film is only barely a Western. Most of the first hour is obsessed with a murder mystery in which even the characters themselves are not all that interested.
Do better, the past. I keep trying to defend you, and occasionally you make it more difficult than you need to.