The Silent Man (1917)

This is a really nifty Hart Western, with an out-of-the-ordinary plot and some quite cinematic elements. Hart, who also directed, plays a gold miner whose claim is ripped off by a pair of no-goods, one of whom marries young women only to turn them into "dance-hall girls"…

Jim Beaver

Real conflicts, believable characters with complicated motivations... not *nearly* as puerile as that Tom Mix movie I watched last week.

Lencho of the Apes

The Silent Man (1917) is not one of William S. Hart's best westerns but it's serviceable and he has a pretty girl with him in Vola Vale. The speed was too jacked-up on the print I saw to get the full feel of the drama. Hart's charisma was always suited for a slower focus…

PUNQ

‘Cuz it ain’t no proper western without no romantic 30 year age gap. Look’d it up on the IMDb, and boy lemme tell you, that there’s an old, old man gettin’ wit that girl. Yeehaw! Anyway, not much else happening here. Couple of shootouts, couple of horse riding bits, a…

𝟙𝟝𝔻𝕚𝕘𝕚𝕥𝕌𝕤𝕖𝕣𝕟𝕒𝕞𝕖

Had a sort of grudge against Hart ever since I watched Buster Keaton's The Frozen North and learned about Hart's attacks on Fatty Arbuckle's innocence. Now I've seen one of his films and can confirm he's a little under mediocre and Keaton's film is that much funnier in…

Lydia Roberts

This kind of western crime and danger, particularly the motivation behind it, seems like it's probably a lot more true to the experience a lot of people in the old west had than cowboys vs. indigenous people and violent, gruesome bank robberies. It's so interesting watching…

Kathleen

Good little western that pushes all the requisite story buttons! Exquisite Art Nouveau /Arts and Craft font and paintings on the story cards! Short running time is a plus!

Lonehand

1917 Extremely instructive to view this alongside contemporaneous Western efforts, most especially the two surviving films John Ford released this year. William S. Hart remains the reliably steely presence he was in Hell's Hinges but the narrative around him -…

Andrew Ford

'Silent' Budd Marr (William S. Hart) risks his life locating some gold in the desert but his pain finally pays off when he hits it rich. He goes into town where he ends up entering a poker game with a crooked man known as Handsome Jack Pressley (Robert McKim). Soon Budd is…

Michael_Elliott