The Gunfighter (1917) Online

The ten-minute cutdown version of this movie that is available at Harpodeon.com is the skeleton of most of William S. Hart's westerns of the era. It's the story of the Good Bad Man and his redemption through the ineluctable ramblings of fate and the smile of a good woman.

In this one, Hart plays an out-and-out gang leader. He's led into that redemption by the offer to make him sheriff so he can kill a rival under the guise of law -- the man who makes the offer figures realizes that at least one will wind up dead, which is all to the good. At least, so I imagine.

This was originally released at 50 minutes, so the meat of the movie is not gone. What you do have is Joe August's beautiful photography. It's more than enough for me.

"The Gun-Fighter," by Monte M. Katterjohn, is well constructed and consistent in both development and direction, but it is too obviously a vehicle for Mr. Hart and therefore lacking in that first value of a play, originality. Mr. Katterjohn has done much better work, especially in characterization. This story reverts to a role Mr. Hart ought to be thoroughly tired of, that of a Western tough whose soft spot is found by a woman of refinement. He has played it so often that one might get the impression that he would not be effective in any other part, whereas he would really be more impressive in a purely human characterization, that of a man of complex impulses and qualities, rather than the purely heroic, long since shelved by dramatists and novelists as lacking in verisimilitude. Few of us are really heroic, but the very fact that we are human and err at times while we go straight at others brings such an impersonation closer to audience sympathies. Mr. Hart, to use a newspaper expression, "follows copy." He is the same man he was in other plays of the same kind, the same exponent of brute strength, modified in some sudden and almost unaccountable conversion when a young lady comes on the scene, as if he had never seen one before in his whole life. As a gun-fighter he must be quick to shoot, yet he makes the heroic claim that he always gives the other fellow a chance. There is really nothing even heroic about being a good shot. How much more fascinating to see so capable an actor play the part of a real man, "In doubt to act or rest, in doubt to deem himself a god or beast, in doubt his mind or body to prefer, born but to die and reasoning but to err." "Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, the glory, jest and riddle of the world." Hart's interesting personality and the constant action of "The Gun-Fighter" constitute its chief attractions. – The Moving Picture World, February 10, 1917