Two Little Rangers

One is sometimes apt to assume too readily that the films of Alice Guy will have proto-feminist content because of her pioneering role as a director (starting with Gaumont in 1896) but there is no doubt that many of her films privilege forceful female characters and distinctly women-orientated themes.

That is very clearly the case here. The two heroines women, the two daughter of the post-mistress who track and capture the evil-doer where the men prove remarkably ineffectual and who use considerable resource and imagination in doing so. Doughty female heroines are not that, however, that rare in early westerns although they are rarely so entirely the heroines as the two girls in this film. I cannot recall another shoot-out that culminates in a confrontation between the villain and a little girl - to the little girl's advantage.

Equally remarkable is the general theme of the film which turns not so much on the crime committed by the villain but on his abusive treatment of his wife.

Overacting there is but it concerns the weakest element in the film - its silly melodramatic ending (which I shall not reveal).