The Hawk

It's another of the innumerable B westerns shot on a five-day schedule for states right release. Its big star is child actor Dickie Jones, who gets a lot of screen time, and yes, he is very cute, arguing with leading man Bruce Lane and dancing to "Turkey In The Straw." The story.... well, I'm sure it made a lot more sense on the page as written by James Oliver Curwood, but by the time it made it to a theater screen, it was as full of holes as a machine-gunned Swiss Cheese. It's a B western. The story doesn't matter.

So why bother? Well, it's the first movie directed by Edward Dmytryk; he was on the editing staff at Paramount when some guy from Poverty Row made him the offer. Dmytryk also edited under a pseudonym. The result isn't a movie that makes sense -- the script prevents that. What it does is move along.

Understand that in 1935, a B western was sluggish. If they wanted to show a man walking into a house, they started at the gate, with the camera watching as he walked through the yard, opened the door, and disappeared within. Dmytryk doesn't do that. His average shot lasts less than 10 seconds, and during the chase and shootout that invariably climaxed B westerns, a similar editing pace applies. You don't have to watch for thirty seconds as the hero rides his horse across the screen in medium long shot. You don't have to sit while two people hold a conversation by saying things slowly, and then t'other thinks a while before making a trite reply. People get on with things, and this motion picture moves. Which is the first and most important thing about a movie.

Dmytryk went back to editing and didn't sit in the director's chair again for four years, but he shows what he can do with a typically shoddy B western with no time, no budget, and cast whose only other performer I recognize in Lafe McKee.

I can't recommend this movie on its absolute merits. The story as it appears is a stinker, and that sinks the entire thing. But as a historical document of the rise of a considerable talent, and how a decent editing pace can make something watchable, well, this is a good example of that.