It is astonishing to look at this ten-minute western and see a love triangle, an Indian attack, people crawling through the dessert in search of water, the cavalry to the rescue -- enough story, in fact, for two John Ford westerns and one Douglas Sirk weeper, performed in ten minutes, with some photography that, even now, is startling in its novelty and beauty. And this is considered one of Griffith's LESSER pictures.
Although Griffith directed more than five hundred pictures, almost all of which survive, he has a vast corpus of works that are rarely seen, because so many people concentrate on his best features and perhaps a dozen of his best-known shorts. Kino is to be applauded for including a sizable number of his lesser-known, but equally powerful shorts in their most recent compilation, and for hiring John Mirsalis to do scores.
Although Griffith directed more than five hundred pictures, almost all of which survive, he has a vast corpus of works that are rarely seen, because so many people concentrate on his best features and perhaps a dozen of his best-known shorts. Kino is to be applauded for including a sizable number of his lesser-known, but equally powerful shorts in their most recent compilation, and for hiring John Mirsalis to do scores.