When Rhea Mitchell arrives in town and discovers she has inherited a saloon with dancing girls, she shuts it down. However, both William S. Hart and crooked gambler J. Barney Sherry want to marry her, so they play poker for her. Hart, the winner, orders Sherry out of town and offers his honest heart to the lady.
That's all that survives of this two-reel western: ten minutes. The photography is great and Hart is believable if a bit florid in his stone-faced gestures. He was fresh off the stage and would adapt this style of acting very well for the silent cinema, learning to show his emotions by what he did instead of what he showed.
This use of action and editing to indicate emotion is known as the Kuleshov Effect. Russian Academician Lev Kuleshov had shown that audiences inferred the actor's thoughts by showing the same clip of Ivan Mouskejine several times and following it a different clip. When Mouskejine was followed by food, the audience said he was showing hunger; followed by a woman, lust. Apparently film makers in the US knew about this without having to speak Russian.
That's all that survives of this two-reel western: ten minutes. The photography is great and Hart is believable if a bit florid in his stone-faced gestures. He was fresh off the stage and would adapt this style of acting very well for the silent cinema, learning to show his emotions by what he did instead of what he showed.
This use of action and editing to indicate emotion is known as the Kuleshov Effect. Russian Academician Lev Kuleshov had shown that audiences inferred the actor's thoughts by showing the same clip of Ivan Mouskejine several times and following it a different clip. When Mouskejine was followed by food, the audience said he was showing hunger; followed by a woman, lust. Apparently film makers in the US knew about this without having to speak Russian.
