1919 - WAGON TRACKS, a Willam S. Hart silent western, it's short but not uninteresting

One of the early stars of silent westerns William S. Hart was the very idea of the good guy western hero riding tall in the saddle doing the honorable thing.  Having not seen a lot of William S. Hart silent westerns or a lot of silent westerns in general I assumed Wagon Tracks was typical of his type of film.

In this film Hart is one of those frontier scouts who lead wagon trains across the prairie in search of the promised land as they like to say.  The complication in this rather simple plot comes from a couple of men and a woman who are involved in the death of Hart's younger brother.  Hart determines to get to the truth of his brother's death so to get a confession he ties up the two men and marches them out to the desert where he denies them water and starves them until they admit their guilt.

Since this is a western there is a a tribe of Native Americans involved and I will have to admit how they are weaved into the denouement of the film makes for kind of an interesting ending.  Justice is served and Hart does not get the girl.  Incidentally the female lead Jane Novak worked into the early 1950's and was the author of all things a book called The Treasury of Chicken Cookery.

The legendary silent film producer Thomas Ince was involved in the production.  Ince was a major character in Bogdanovich's film The Cat's Meow.  He died under very mysterious circumstances.  The film was shot in Sacramento, California by cameraman Joseph August.  August was one of Hollywood's top visual stylists and had worked with John Ford and George Stevens. August was a major influence on Ford's technique.  Wagon Tracks is available on YouTube if you poke around a bit in a decent copy.

Wagon Tracks was written by C. Gardner Sullivan, the running time is 69 minutes. 

1962 - ROME ADVENTURE, on location love story has the scenic wonders of Troy Donahue's hair

Troy Donahue has awesome hair in Rome Adventure.

Troy's hair, with the assist of a lot of styling gel, whips around on his head in about 3 different ways, It  goes over his head at the top and in the back he's got it perfectly  coiffed coming down behind his head.  Then he's got this side hair thing going which kind of intersects with the other 2 waves of his hair head.  He is also very blonde. 

Angie Dickinson unfortunately made poor hair choices for this film. Angie's hair is really odd looking, it's pulled way back in a beehive thing throughout the film so it looks like she has a really large forehead kind of like that creature from This Island Earth. 

Suzanne Pleshette can't really compete with these 2 hair hogs but she gives it a decent try.  She sticks a ribbon in her hair and some curly thing a ma gigs that she twists around.  Unfortunately she's just not in the ballgame.

It's just hard for the ladies in this film to compete with Troy

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1919 - BLIND HUSBANDS, Erich Von Stroheim's impressive first film

In his first film Erich Von Stroheim is the auteur in every sense, he wrote the story, directed and starred as the slimy Teutonic military officer who attempts to seduce the wife of an American doctor on a mountain climbing holiday in Switzerland.

This is an extremely well made and acted silent film.  Von Stroheim already shows his fascination with the less then sterling side of human nature.  His fascination with Prussian military attitudes is a part of this film and will continue on through many of his films. He clearly enjoys himself as the Prussian  officer trying to get the American doctor's wife into bed.  

For a first time director Von Stroheim showed a pretty strong command of the film medium.  He moves the story along with a strong visual sense and keeps the silent acting of the cast under control having them give naturalistic performances. 

The film's climax during a mountain climbing expedition shows Von Stroheim  setting  the dramatic climax against an impressive background. Arnold Fanck clearly learned a thing or two from Von Stroheim. 

This is a sharply observed character study made by a tough uncompromising filmmaker.  As has been noted, Erich Von Stroheim went on to create a series of impressive films only compromised by his exacting methods and his increasingly extravagant spending on each succeeding film