Hell Bent (1918)
Only four of John Ford's films made from 1917-1920 still exist currently. As a year has gone by, since Ford started directing films, you can see a little more polish in his work. It's not an amazing film, but it is fairly better than the ones that came before this film, mostly in its design. I feel the basic plot-line is what keeps this one from being really good. As usual, boy meets girl. Girl gets ego boost by her new job at a dance hall and leaves boy. Boy rescues girl from jerk making advances. Boy and girl make up. Jerk and girl's brother attempt a robbery. Jerk, now full bad guy, kidnaps girl. Boy rides into the desert to save the day.
What is special about this film is the attempt at new film-making techniques. The story is depicted by implying that the story is being told by a novelist and in the first scene of the movie we see the film open up out from a painting, which Ford did quite well. It is a nice technique that includes Ford's usual tricks. From here, we go into the story in a western town called Rawhide and the cowboy fun ensues.
This film was part of the film-making assembly line. They would churn out a bunch of these every year with low budgets and tight shooting schedules. It most likely hurt the quality of these films, but was part of the early 20th century film-making (money-making), factory and it was a job. These films also suffered from the Censorship Bureau sticking their noses in things. if it wasn't for the Ford touch I might score this one more harshly than the other films he did before this, because the story did seem disjointed in some parts. However, the improvement on camera-work, composition, editing and technique gets better in this one. You can see the progress happening with these films as we move into the 1920s. As with a lot of Ford's silent films, this one was lost, but was found in a vault in a foreign country. Hence the fact that, you might see a version that has English subtitles under the subtitles.
7.6 (C+ MyGrade) = 7 IMDB
