Starring: Harry Carey, Duke Lee, George Berrell, Molly Malone, Ted Brooks, Hoot Gibson, Milt Brown, Vester Pegg, William Steele
Writer: George Hively
Cinematography: George Scott
Music: SILENT (Blu-Ray score by Michael Gatt)
B&W, 1h 02m. 1.33:1 presentation.
Released on August 27, 1917 by Universal Film Manufacturing Company.
My experience: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-Ray
It's hard to believe that John Ford's first film as director was released all the way back in 1917 -- 105 years ago! To put that in perspective, if you go back another 105 years from that, you're looking at the War of 1812, when Canada wasn't its own country yet and the United States wasn't even 40 years old. All this is to say that we often remember John Ford as a director of westerns in its heyday (the 1950s), but he got his start decades earlier. And after watching his feature length debut, Straight Shooting, the thing that impressed me most was that at the age of 23, his eye for framing and composition was already stunning.
The movie itself, compared to today's oftentimes needlessly convoluted stories, is quite simple. The protagonist, Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey), a mercenary gunslinger, is hired by evil rancher Thunder Flint (Duke Lee) to dispose of a homesteading family -- father Sweetwater Sims (George Berrell), daughter Joan (Molly Malone) and son Tom (Ted Brooks) -- whose land he wants for his cattle. Cheyenne Harry finds himself torn between the two factions soon enough, at which point Flint also hires assassin Placer Fremont (Vester Pegg) as insurance.
Sounds a little bit cliche, doesn't it? Well, cliches have to start from somewhere, and this type of storytelling was all the rage back in silent cinema. In fact, the character of Cheyenne Harry is probably a bit less of a stereotype than many other "white hat" cowboys of the day. There's a sense of humor about him, and he's a little bit uncouth; in truth, he's a bad man who finds himself torn between two worlds and in the end redeems himself, itself a situation Ford would portray on screen many times in the future.
I've mentioned in previous posts that duality is a key facet of Ford's personality and filmmaking style, and this is evident even at this early junction. Time and again, in this film and the future, Ford lionizes the good old days and yearns for simpler times, while at the same time being well aware of all the good things progress and the onward march of time has led to. His main character here, Cheyenne Harry, is likewise caught between his unsavory past and the potential to right himself.
There are some shots in this film -- released over a year before the first World War came to an end -- that are breathtaking. A posse of horsemen riding down a steep hill; the co-ordination of action on different planes; even the simple use of irises and dissolves are proof of the fact that "Jack" Ford (as he was billed up until 1923) had a preternaturally sublime gift. While I can't honestly say that this is close to the top of my favourite John Ford films, it is a wonderfully assured debut from a filmmaker who was probably not much more than five years out of high school at that point.
6.5 dastardly drovers out of 10.
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