Dangerous Hours (1919) Online

This movie is overwrought, hysterical and little more than tripe. Lloyd Hughs, under the immoral and debilitating influence of a college education, falls for the Bolshevik labor agitators.

While this trash may have some interest to those who wish to understand the propaganda of the period, an era of Red Scares and the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, there is no mention made of the outrages that made such agitators important and gave them the power to organize people. Instead, all the ills of the movement are laid at the feet of Claire Dubrey's character, a woman who is "a rebel against every convention and law civilization has found necessary" without being overly specific. Doubtless she needs to be deprived of her shoes and locked in the kitchen.

The previous comment could not be more off. Dangerous Hours was incendiary and simplistic. It was more a tract than a film made as a profound social commentary. It was written by C. Gardner Sullivan, the dean of American screenwriters, a man who set the mold for all screenwriters who came after him. Many of Sullivan's scripts are among the most lyric and poignant of the silent period. He did not mess up and make a stupid film. Dangerous Hours was a collaboration between Ince and a number of figures within the American labor movement who saw the film as a way of warning blue collar America about the false promise of Bolshevism. Of course the characters are overdrawn. DUH. Critcizing this film for being unfair to leftists is like criticizing Keaton films for lacking character development or Birth of a Nation because there is no talking. Dangerous Hours is a very well-done film, but must be understood in light of its mission and social context.

One of the most significant stars of producer Thomas Ince's "specials" for Paramount was Lloyd Hughes (1897-1958), who began appearing at this time and continued almost to the end of the producer's career, as I outline in my Ince biography. Ince regarded Hughes as genuinely typical of thousands of other young men, knowing the public wants to see one of its own as its hero—"the sort of boy no girl would hesitate to introduce to her mother, nor a boy to his sister. Hughes embodied many of the same "all-American" traits as Charles Ray and Douglas MacLean, but with less of a persona, allowing him to be cast in a wider variety of roles.

Hughes's first lead came in Dangerous Hours, a movie best summed up by its working title, Americanism (Versus Bolshevism). Ince explained the movie's purpose in a letter seeking press publicity. Americanism shall be directed against the Bolshevist—the agitator who steps in between Capital and Labor and destroys all thought or intention of a peaceable settlement of differences; it shall depict the way to his elimination and the establishment of a policy of "fair play" between the two great classes of our industrial life. Americanism shall present in story form the argument that in greater mutual confidence between organized workers and organized employers lies the solution of the bewildering economic problems which now confronts the world. Employers must recognize organized labor is entitled to an equal voice in determining the conditions under which work shall be regulated; and both shall realize that competition, both foreign and domestic, can be made only through wholehearted, sincere teamwork—then it will become possible to demonstrate that the world does not have to go through the red horror of Bolshevism.

Dangerous Hours opens amidst a strike in Patterson, New Jersey, where the workers have honest grievances. However, as in intertitle informs, "The dangerous element following in the wake of Labor, as the riff-raff and ghouls follow an army.... Unwilling to do an honest day's work at any price. Ranting hysterically against Law-Order-Decency." This mob throws rocks and are as much the enemy of the union as employers: "It's those confounded Bolsheviks horning in again when they're not wanted!"

The rabble has attracted a leader, "John King, graduate of an American university. But a disciple of the 'Greater Freedom' as painted by Russian 'Liberal' Writers.... and owing to his ardent sincerity, rich soil for the poisonous sophistry of fanatics, drones and dreamers." This is the role undertaken by Hughes, determined to prove he can be a worker, and selected by the Bolsheviks precisely because of his American traits. As portrayed by Claire DuBrey, "Sophia Guerni, a rebel against every convention and law civilization has found necessary" has attached herself to King. When he briefly goes home to visit his ailing father, and Mary Weston (Barbara Castleton), "a sweet type of clean American woman," the distinction between the two conflicting influences has been drawn.

King ignores the fact that his father needs support, financial and otherwise, and is drawn by Guerni's telegram and the "call of humanity" back to New York. Just arrived is a Bolshevik direct from Russia, Boris Blotchi, a literal "blot" on humanity whose hands are bloody from massacre and "the nationalization of women." The Bolsheviks say that labor leaders are paid off by management, and they turn their sights on a shipyard owned by Mary's family. King's father disowns his son, and even Mary will have nothing more to do with a mob leader. King fails to realize the truth until overhearing Boris boasting that he has kept King from knowing that they plan to burn and bomb Mary's plant. The truth finally allows King to realize the Bolsheviks are self-proclaimed terrorists who despise America. He denounces them as liars and swine, but they club him before he can stop them. The possible xenophobia becomes muted by the emphasis on the sense of betrayal felt by King in finding his good intentions misused.

The Bolsheviks attack the shipyard and create a conflagration, fighting the union men. In the film, Bolshevism is represented as using violence, against the very workers it pretends to champion. Amidst the carnage King risks his life by grabbing one of the Bolshevik grenades, telling the union men to run, and throws it at the Bolsheviks. Days later, he begs forgiveness of the workers, Mary, and his father for having thought himself a savior. Misled by foreign ideology, he has survived his dangerous hours, the same good intentions that led to his error also permitting him to win redemption. He hopes to start his life anew in his hometown with Mary and his father, a hometown significantly named New Meadows.

Dangerous Hours is careful not to undercut unions or workers, or claim that grievances are not valid; hence it is not a conservative document. The tone is far from the reactionary texts of post-World War II "red scare" films, and precisely because of this, Dangerous Hours is one of the more dramatically coherent Hollywood responses to Bolshevism. The movie cost $116,857, but grossed only $140,775, suggesting it may well have been too polemical to attract audiences.

Thanks to the narrative structure of Dangerous Hours, and its strong characterization, the movie is relevant to subsequent times when ideology is accompanied by violent tactics. However, it was far from the first such film; for instance, D.W. Griffith's The Voice of the Violin (1909) offered a German immigrant who becomes involved in an anarchist attempt to bomb a wealthy household.

The best thing about the movie 'Dangerous Hours' is its title. I've never made any secret of the fact that I despise all forms of communism, especially the Soviet variety, and that I also despise movies which depict communism favourably. Well, 'Dangerous Hours' is fervently anti-communist, and yet it delivers its message so dishonestly (and manipulates the audience so egregiously) that I very nearly felt sorry for the communists! I certainly felt sorry for the actors lumbered with playing Trotskyites in this inept movie.

Handsome but bland Lloyd Hughes plays John King. With a name like that, you know he's a crusading idealist. He observes a picket line at a silk factory, and then notices that outside agitators (redlegs?) are infiltrating the union. When John tells a policeman that these agitators are merely trying to uplift humanity, the cop (in a nicely cynical line) replies that they can do it someplace further up the street.

Along comes exotic blonde Sophia Guerni. With a name like that, you know she's a slimy foreigner. Sophia has a penchant for wearing heavily frogged shirts of the style usually favoured by Volga boatmen; the rig makes her look like Eugene Onegin. Enticed by Sophia, naive John involves himself in the workers' struggle, not realising that he's merely being duped by the bolshies.

Into this borscht bounds a bolshevik who rejoices in the monicker Boris Blotchi. With a name like that, you know he's a filthy agitator. Boris is Blotchi by name and blotchy by nature. He's also a Russian communist who has come to the United States with the specific agenda of organising American labourers away from their legitimate grievances and into a movement to overthrow democracy. He and Sophia are in cahoots ... I mean, they're comrades in the revolution.

SPOILERS COMING. It's clear to us (but not to John) that the coldly beautiful Sophia is interested in him only because she can exploit him as a dupe. But the rather less exotic May Weston is attracted to John unselfishly ... and May is 100% yankee-doodle American. It's no mystery how this movie will end, but before it gets there John is embroiled in a climactic strike action that turns into a riot.

'Dangerous Hours' does address real issues. When this movie was made (1919), organisations such as the International Workers of the World were trying to organise and unionise American labourers ... but those organisations were heavily infiltrated by communists and other agitators who had their own agenda that contradicted the workers' interests, and most Americans (including the labourers) wisely mistrusted such organisers. Unfortunately, 'Dangerous Hours' makes no attempt to address the issues honestly. This movie's intertitles constantly editorialise, telling the audience how we're supposed to think at every point in the narrative. As a staunch advocate of democracy, I'm always annoyed when dramatic works which advocate democracy don't trust their audiences or readers to think for themselves. All of the communist characters in this film are stereotypes, and the actors depict them accordingly.

The bland Lloyd Hughes is now remembered only for 'The Lost World' and 'The Mysterious Island', two science-fiction films in which he was easily upstaged by (respectively) a runaway brontosaurus and a horde of platypus humanoids. In the early sequences of 'Dangerous Hours', Hughes's blandness actually works in his favour; we accept him as a blank slate on which the wily Sophia can write her agenda. Later in the film, when John King recovers his wits and his conscience, Hughes is less believable. Interestingly, two years after starring in 'Dangerous Hours', Lloyd Hughes gave possibly the best performance of his career in 'Hail the Woman': in a supporting role, again as a naive young man who is easily led (this time by his father) yet who again recovers his integrity and his courage by the final reel. 'Dangerous Hours' and 'Hail the Woman' were both scripted or co-scripted by C. Gardner Sullivan; I suspect that Hughes's vastly superior performance in the latter film was down to the expert direction of John Griffith Wray ... a much better director than Fred Niblo, who helmed 'Dangerous Hours'. Wray's premature death was a great loss to the cinema.

Some of the other reviewers on IMDb seem to feel that I rate movies based on whether or not they stroke my own personal predilections. If that were true, then -- since I'm extremely anti-communist and pro-democracy -- I had ought to give high marks to 'Dangerous Hours'. In fact, although I agree with this movie's politics, I dislike its weak story telling, its dishonest depictions of communists, and its inability to trust the audience to think for ourselves. My rating for this one: just 3 out of 10, mostly for the production values. Pass the borscht, comrade.