Hell's Hinges

The story is dead simple: a tough guy is redeemed by love and becomes a defender of good over evil. The fact that it is told just as simply as it's constructed gives it a lot of power, though. The saloon-owner and the tough hombre both want to keep law and religion out of town, for different reasons. The saloon keeper sees it as a threat to his trade. The cowboy sees it as a curtailment of personal freedom. One look at the new preacher's sister changes his life: is it her beauty or her purity that strikes him to the core? In W.S. Hart's cosmos, they are the same thing. Whereas most great westerns are about the control of land, about advancing through physical spaces (and that's why they're such excellent visual subject matter) this one is really about the control of spiritual territory. The physical town will be conquered by the church-group only if it conquers the spiritual realm.

William S. Hart, who had considerable experience as a stage actor, including the performance of a good deal of Shakespeare, clearly understood that in the movies, acting and personal presence were inseparable. His acting is incredibly restrained, and he lets the contours of his face speak volumes. He makes a few very stylized gestures, but mostly relies on his personal presence, which is considerable. He is much more animated early in the film, before his conversion. Once he is won over by the message of the church, he never cracks a smile, barely moves his face at all unless he's really angry.

The entire film is as straightforward and unvarnished as Hart himself. The town is a spare group of unpainted wood buildings in barren wasteland. The Villain wants to run things, and he'll do whatever it takes with no subtrefuge necessary. The saloon girls are blatantly prostitutes. The church-goers are women and older men; all the young men are hell-raisers. The hero's prayer is, in essence, "God, if you really answer prayers, then what I want is the girl." It all sounds incredibly corny, but it rings so true when you watch it, it's hard not to feel a thrill.

Hart plays a borderline bad guy reformed by a preacher's sister. The idea does sound corny but the darn thing works.

A young minister (Jack Standing) and his sister (Clara Williams) arrive in a wide-open town which is nicknamed "Hell's Hinges." The town villain (Alfred Hollingsworth), who, of course, runs the saloon, decides he is going to run the minister out of town. Hart wants nothing to do with religion, so he is on board with the plan ... until he meets Williams.

Eventually, Hollingsworth engages the town "ho" (Louise Glaum) to get the minister drunk, which gives the townspeople license to burn down the church. In one of the better climaxes of any western, Hart angrily but methodically gets revenge. In one very powerful scene, he stands calmly outside the saloon as it is burning behind him. A complete town (35 buildings, in this case) was built at Inceville, the studio owned by producer Thomas Ince. It was burned to the ground during the climax. Some newspapers reported that several extras were injured during the fire.

The film has some historical significance as it features the first screen appearance of John Gilbert, who can be spotted in a few scenes. Supposedly Hart was so impressed with Gilbert that he signed him for another western.

The silent western has a lot going against it. As a western, the plot is grounded in an exaggerated human experience heightened by a minimised physical environment. The silent film too has to exaggerate the experience, not only in the mannerisms of the actors, but in the setting and props as well. No wonder so many silent westerns are seen as inflated and risibly tiresome.

Add a third problem: the religious experience. This too is often exaggerated because of how profoundly inward the process is. So we have a scene with Hart cleaned up, hair combed back, nodding his head as he reads the Bible. Avoidable? Probably, Demille would have been a better candidate. But we can still admire how free of convention the film is in its structure and methods, something Hart would pursue in his more worthwhile works.

3 out of 5 - Some strong elements

Just a few intertitles into "Hell's Hinges," I said, That must be by Gardner Sullivan. I stopped the movie -- which I was watching at YouTube.com -- and came to IMDb to see the credits: Sure enough, C. Gardner Sullivan wrote the story and the screenplay.

Mr. Sullivan produced some of the most poetic intertitles in all of silent Hollywood, and went on to write some talkie screenplays, too.

His prose coupled with the drama of the story and the acting of William S. Hart and a talented large cast and with the excellent directing of Charles Swickard as well as Mr. Hart and Clifford Smith make "Hell's Hinges" one of the most gripping of silent westerns.

It is, in fact, so classic and so iconic that the great Jon Tuska included it in his PBS series, "They Went Thataway."

That TV show was probably my introduction to William S. Hart, and when I moved to Los Angeles, one of my first missions was to find the (now defunct) Silent Movie Theatre, run by the lamented John Hampton and his wife, and beg for William S. Hart movies.

Alas, the Theatre never showed any, but I was able to rent "Tumbleweeds" in a 16 mm. format to project in my tiny living room. (It's also available at YouTube and I urge you to see it.)

I have been a Hart fan really since Jon Tuska's introduction, and my admiration has only grown with each Hart movie viewing.

"Hell's Hinges" is almost 100 years old at this writing, 21 August 2015, and it holds up extremely well, although I do recommend the "A cinema history" print at YouTube rather than another, which plays some Beethoven piano reductions as the music score, which is, of course, beautiful but really not appropriate.

Also, the print by "A cinema history" is clear and crisp.

Hart looked young and even chubby-faced, especially as compared to his craggier later looks, as in, for example, "Tumbleweeds." A trained stage actor, he was always able to portray his needed emotion or thought or action beautifully for the camera, and one can just look at him and realize why an entire town would be cowed.

When you watch this, do remember the context: It was produced in 1916, and styles of acting and writing were different. Not worse, in fact in lots of ways better, but decidedly different, so remember context.

Frankly, I LOVED "Hell's Hinges," and am so grateful to YouTube and "A cinema history" for posting this excellent movie and allowing me to watch it, and watch it again in the future.

The grim, somber tone of this Western does not at all keep it from being a watchable and interesting feature. William S. Hart's screen presence is put to very good use, and the tension is built up steadily. The atmosphere is effective, and along with the story, it is interesting in its contrast with the usual expectations of the genre.

Hart is well-cast as the stoical gunslinger who becomes fascinated by the purity of a preacher's sister. The character's transformation might be a little too abrupt, and it might have been an even better movie if 'Blaze' had changed more reluctantly, but Hart himself is quite effective in the role. Jack Standing also does a good job as the weak-willed preacher whose folly leads to so much havoc.

The story is quite moralistic in its way, but it is nevertheless pretty interesting. The conflicts and tensions are of a much different nature than westerns usually feature, and the tone is unrelentingly serious and foreboding. Things are built up carefully into a harrowing finale that is filmed with a lot of detail.

Features like this show why Hart rose to such popularity. His persona seems to have been a good one for the times, and his strengths as an actor show up well in silent cinema.