Straight Shooting

This film is important, because it was John Ford's first. You can see some of the camera-work and styles, first being born in this film, that he would use in his later classics, most notably Ford's classic "Front-Door" shot. He always shot the front door from inside the house, framing the outside world in the doorway as the characters walk in. It's one of his biggest shots in The Searchers (1956) and there is one in this film too. It also begins Ford's relationship with then silent superstar, Harry Carey and they would do 22 films together just in the period between 1917-1920.

In this film, Harry's character learns that you need to see both sides of what is being said before you make your choice. Bad guy Cattleman Flint sends other bad guys to harass a farming family only to see his own men turn on him to protect the innocent farmers. There are also cool shots of the open-West and prairie, which would be a huge part of the western film's allure that would follow for the next 60 years. Wide shots of beautiful scenery always helped to drive the western forward and those shots are in this film too.

But, it is however still a very basic plot (part of the pioneering film-making evolution), and the film can be tedious at points. As always, I try to put myself into 1917. I try to enforce on myself a mind-set, an attitude and emotion that helps me understand what it was like to be a person living in 1917 and seeing this film for the first time. It's also pretty cool to think that the characters/settings in this film took place in a part of history that, for this film, only happened about 35 years before, as opposed to 135 years before for 2020. Everyone should see this entry into film-history.

7.3 (C+ MyGrade) = 7 IMDB