William S. Hart continues to be the best discovery I’ve made so far during this project. I knew virtually nothing about him before I watched The Bargain, and by virtually nothing I mean his name was vaguely familiar to me as belonging to someone who acted in Westerns. I did not expect to enjoy his films, and in fact, didn’t have any on the original list I made the day I came up with the idea for this podcast. It was only after I’d started watching my way through the list that I came upon The Bargain in a book about silent films, and learned that Hart was one of the legends of the silent era that I knew I needed to give him a chance. I’m glad I did!
Hell’s Hinges is the third Hart film I’ve watched to this point, and while The Bargain remains my favorite, Hell’s Hinges is a solid effort. This time around, Hart plays Blaze Tracy, the toughest guy in a lawless town.
When the film opens, we meet Bob Henley, played by Jack Standing, who I last saw as Landry in the delightful Fanchon the Cricket. At his mother’s insistence, he’s become a priest. He’s ill suited for the lifestyle, but his mother is immensely proud of his decision. The higher-ups in the church realize he’s likely to succumb to the temptations of big city life, so they assign him to a church in a tiny western town. He heads west, accompanied by his sister Faith, played by Clara Williams. She was Nell, Hart’s love interest, in The Bargain, and again there are sparks between the two of them. Frank Burke, the sheriff in The Bargain, and who also had a small role in Civilization shows up as Zeb.
Upon arriving in the town of Hell’s Hinges, the Henley siblings are “greeted” by a rowdy mob, led by Blaze. He has been asked by Silk Miller, the owner of the saloon, to run them out of town, and has promised to scare the reverend to death. Circumstances immediately change, as it’s love at first sight when Blaze sets his eyes on Faith. While that situation is a cinematic cliché, it’s believable here. We’ve all experienced what Blaze does at least once or twice in our lives, and the initial meeting between Blaze and Faith exudes chemistry and realism in a way that one seldom sees onscreen.
Needless to say, Silk and the rest of the town rowdies don’t see it that way, and are appalled that the meanest, toughest scoundrel in town has suddenly given up drinking and shooting, and is instead attending church. Undeterred, Silk quickly realizes that Bob Henley is not the most virutous of priests, so he invites him to give a private sermon to the dancehall girls. One in particular, Dolly, has been instructed to seduce Henley, and she handles her task with aplomb. The scene of the two of them drinking and canoodling is hilarious. Sure enough, he gets drunk and spends the night with her, and oversleeps. His congregation sets out to find him, and are dismayed when they do.
The disgraced reverend has quickly taken to the bottle, to the point where Blaze must ride to the next town to find him a doctor. Meanwhile, Henley proves far more devoted to the drinking life than he ever was to the cloth, and immediately takes up with the saloon crowd. He and his new friends get drunk and decide to burn down the church, leading to a brilliant battle between the mob and the church-goers, during which Henley is killed.
Blaze returns too late to stop the destruction. In the film’s best scene, he creeps up to the saloon, wherein lays an ambush, but he realizes this and kicks in the door with guns blazing and in a scene similar to one that would play out 76 years later in Unforgiven, wins a saloon shootout against overwhelming odds. After killing Silk, Blaze does what Eastwood only threatens to do, and burns the entire town of Hell’s Hinges to embers, after which he and Faith light out to start a life together.
I watched this on a DVD, though the quality wasn’t great. I found a version on Youtube that actually looks a lot better than the DVD copy.
Next I’m watching The Fire [1916], directed by Giovanni Pastrone.
Hell's Hinges (Mar. 5, 1916)