Straight Shooting

Dividing the film in two acts. The first introduces the characters, establishes the quarrel and builds up tension for the second act which comprises of preparation, showdown and aftermath. Simple and basic but good enough as a blueprint. Whats not good enough is the execution. The first act drags on for too long losing the tension it couldve built up. It has many scenes and characters that add nothing to the plot and arent visually pleasing with still boring shots of actors staring and talking. Some characters seemed like they were going to be important but just faded out as if they ran off ( fremont, the sheriff, ... ##apparently the movie was censored, so some things may be the result of that). Fortunately, the first act ends with the best scene in the film with harry "going straight" after the boy's death. The camera doesnt linger too long on the close-ups and carey and malone save the film giving the audience everything they actually need going into the second act. The second act starts out strong but goes downhill during the shootout. Influence of griffith is pretty obvious here. Not considering how fair, the comparisons with the birth of a nation are inevitable and they arent favorable. In the birth of a nation, the audience are riding to the rescue with the actors. The cross cutting and the fighting is natural and superb. Here, its all nonsensical. With hilarious shooting and a camera thats always detached and in the wrong place (except in the interior shots). How fair is it to compare straight shooting with one the greatest movies ever considering their budget,time of release, director experience and ..... is up to you but the griffith influence certainly encourages it. It also showcases how good scarlet days is compared to other westerns of the time. Even though i personally wouldnt recommend this to someone looking for a good film that isnt a john ford fan. I do appreciate its historical value as a base for future ford films and westerns in general (even if it is the minimum and poorly executed) and what they were able to achieve with a two reel film budget.

A hired gun swaps sides when hired by a rancher to see off a farming family that needs the rancher's water to survive. John Ford's first feature demonstrates just how on top of shot composition he was even in those distant, primitive days. The story is nothing to write home about, but Harry Carey shows just why Ford later eulogised about him being the 'bright star of the early Western sky.'

Truly wonderful as many (most?) silent films are, there are unquestionably some qualities of the era that may may make them difficult to abide for some modern viewers. The older the picture, the more one can observe such idiosyncrasies. Chief among these are a very strictly regimented plot development, and discrete divisions between shots and scenes, leading to a somewhat stilted flow to the feature and a heightened awareness that the course of events is staged (i.e., suspension of disbelief somewhat takes a knock). While it's no fault of the cast, it's also worth noting that there's sometimes such a startling lack of diversity among the assembled actors that, especially for lack of verbal dialogue, characters might be all but entirely indistinguishable from one another, lending to easy confusion about what is happening in a scene. By all means, such movies can be worthy of their own accord, and entertaining, but I can get why they don't appeal to all. I'd have said the same of myself, once, and even still it's not as easy to engage with titles of this kin - and 'Straight shooting' is certainly characterized by such peculiarities to one extent or another. If one can overlook such matters, there's nonetheless a fair bit to enjoy here. Though limited by the basic nature of how films were made in the 1910s, I think the cast do well with what they're given; at some points the acting is rather impressive, not least in light of the need for body language and facial expression alone to carry the day. The visual presentation is quite fine, including sets, costume design, stunts, and those effects that are employed. John Ford's direction seems capable, with the execution of some moments coming off particularly well, and the core of George Hively's story is duly compelling. It's perhaps nothing remarkable standing next to all this feature's many brethren, but it's a swell tale all the same, ripe for cinematic storytelling. The value herein is troubled by those facets suggested above, and also a small tinge less focus in the narrative than would be desirable. The more 'Straight shooting' steps to the side from the central thread of villainous ranchers antagonizing earnest farmers, the more one is given pause while watching. The ending sadly feels overdone, for example. Above all I think of the sequence in the first half of the picture, around twelve minutes all told, in which a number of characters all find themselves in the same hotel/bar. Nowhere is the problem of the casting more evident as it's hard to discern who characters are, or what they're actually doing, and this scene doesn't even seem notably crucial to the plot. Even at that, more so than not this is well made, and fairly fun such as it is. The climax is surely the highlight, that part of the movie that I'd be most likely to point to as an illustration of its worth. The story is reasonably engrossing, and everyone involved clearly put in hard work to make this the picture that it is. A bit more mindfulness would have helped this to meet greater success and stand out more, but it's decent enough as it is - and anyway, what it comes down to is that the faults of 'Straight shooting' are mostly issues that were common to productions in the silent era in the first place. Ultimately this falls rather short of being essential, and anyone who isn't already enamored of early cinema won't find anything here to change their mind. If you're looking for something light, though, something to watch as passing entertainment, it just might be what you're looking for.

A landmark in the history of the Western, this was John Ford's - here using the name Jack - first feature and the comeback for Harry Carey, who began playing the character of Cheyenne Harry a year before in A Knight of the Range and would portray the character until 1936's Aces Wild. Cheyenne Harry may be an outlaw, but he has a good heart. In this movie, he's hired by a rancher named Thunder Flint to kick the Sims family off his farmland. It all ends up as most of these stories do, with the rich ranchers against the poor farmers. Hoot Gibson, who was second to only Tom Mix as a star between the World Wars, also appears.

This film is important, because it was John Ford's first. You can see some of the camera-work and styles, first being born in this film, that he would use in his later classics, most notably Ford's classic "Front-Door" shot. He always shot the front door from inside the house, framing the outside world in the doorway as the characters walk in. It's one of his biggest shots in The Searchers (1956) and there is one in this film too. It also begins Ford's relationship with then silent superstar, Harry Carey and they would do 22 films together just in the period between 1917-1920. In this film, Harry's character learns that you need to see both sides of what is being said before you make your choice. Bad guy Cattleman Flint sends other bad guys to harass a farming family only to see his own men turn on him to protect the innocent farmers. There are also cool shots of the open-West and prairie, which would be a huge part of the western film's allure that would follow for the next 60 years. Wide shots of beautiful scenery always helped to drive the western forward and those shots are in this film too. But, it is however still a very basic plot (part of the pioneering film-making evolution), and the film can be tedious at points. As always, I try to put myself into 1917. I try to enforce on myself a mind-set, an attitude and emotion that helps me understand what it was like to be a person living in 1917 and seeing this film for the first time. It's also pretty cool to think that the characters/settings in this film took place in a part of history that, for this film, only happened about 35 years before, as opposed to 135 years before for 2020. Everyone should see this entry into film-history. 7.3 (C+ MyGrade) = 7 IMDB

"Straight Shooting" is notable as John (aka Jack) Ford's first feature length film. He had directed a few two-reelers earlier. In fact this film started out as a short but was expanded to feature length during production. It stars Harry Carey as a recurring Ford character, Cheyenne Harry. The plot is what would be a staple among westerns, the cattlemen against the nesters. Leading the cattle ranchers is Thunder Flint (Duke Lee) who wants to drive the farmers off of their land. Sweet Water Sims (George Berrell) and his comely young daughter Joan (Molly Malone) and son Ted (Ted Brooks) represent (for budgetary reasons) the struggling farmers. Flint hires wanted criminal ($1,000 reward no less) Cheyenne Harry (Carey) to drive the nesters out. Harry is a hard drinkin', hard smokin' fast on the draw hombre. He even gets into an all night drinking bout with Flint co-hort Placer Freemont (Vestor Pegg). Before Harry can take action on the farmers, Flint dry gulches young Ted Sims, killing him. Harry comes upon the burial service and takes pity on them, the lovely Joan in particular. Joan has been the apple of cowhand Sam Turner's (Hoot Gibson) eye during all of the trouble. Harry sees the error of his ways and sides with the farmers. Flint orders Freemont to kill Harry. In a showdown, Harry prevails. Flint then gathers a large gang of cattlemen and plans an attack on the farmers. Seeing that the farmers are badly outnumbered, Harry seeks help from a former outlaw pal Black-Eye Pete (Milton Brown) and his gang. A large battle ensues and............................... Harry is then faced with a dilemma. Does he get Joan to mend that tear in his shirt or does he ride on? Many of Ford's future trademarks are in this film. He always liked plenty of hard ridin' horsemen complete with horse falls with plenty of action. Long panoramic shots such as the shot of a cattle drive from the top of a hill impress. Lots of gun play, a sympathetic good/bad hero and a little romance thrown in. The trademark "Fordian" humor would come later. By the way, what happened to the price on Harry's head? A good start to a long and rewarding career.

This is notable for being an early directorial effort by John Ford, the great Western filmmaker. It's short and simple--about a feud between ranchers and farmers over water supply. The print I saw was missing some brief footage, and the film isn't in the best shape. Still, it is clearly unimpressive. There are plenty of shots with open doorways, and one might find similarities with Ford's later work, but the static camera positioning is prosaic even for 1917. Harry Carey's Cheyenne Harry is a bandit turned good after seeing an attractive female--a role too similar to the one William S. Hart had already introduced to the screen in nearly every one of his vehicles. And, the climax of "Straight Shooting" seems to be taken straight from D.W. Griffith; it especially resembles "The Birth of a Nation" in a clumsy, derivative way. Eventually, Ford would improve upon past films and film-making, but here he was just copying others.

The fifth film in Harry Carey's "Cheyenne Harry" series, and the first of feature length (namely 5 reels), this was also the third in the series to be directed by John "Jack" Ford. Already actor Carey had established the persona that he would interpret for the rest of his career. He was still playing similar lead roles in the 1940s, most particularly in Henry Hathaway's "Shepherd of the Hills" (1941). When he made "Straight Shooting", Carey was 39 years old. Pleasingly, he acts his age and no attempt is made to disguise this fact. If anything, he actually looks a bit older. Typically, the romantic sub-plot centers around Carey's age. Will he marry a girl less than half his age? (Actually Molly Malone was 29 when this film was made, but she looks 18 at the very most). "Straight Shooting" was director Ford's first feature film. He had previously directed three two-reelers and one three-reeler. Ford is not feeling his way here. He obviously already knows what he wants to achieve and how to obtain these results. "Straight Shooting" is a sophisticated movie, centering on the Cheyenne Harry character, and Ford is not afraid to paint his hero in less than glowing terms. The movie is full of scenes and choices which stay in the memory. Even when you see the movie and are familiar with the choices the characters make, you want to see the action unfold again and again. Available on a watchable Alpha DVD.

It's been objected that Straight Shooting uses static camera positions, but especially in the long shots fine action and scenery are captured, like lines of horsemen coming down a hillside. In the story characters make interesting choices: a cowboy aids a farmer, a bandit gets the band of a chum of his to come fight against the bad guys who want possession of the whole territory and especially its water. The Bess played by Mollie Malone (a more solid presence than some other actresses) gets her gun ready as does another woman. And Bess too makes some interesting choices. If I can judge by the hat, a Mexican guy steals a jar of jam, but he's helped save the farm, one of the ways Ford and Hively avoid the sexism and racism of D. W. Griffith's Battle of Elderbush Gulch of a few years previous. That said, the Prague print I saw has gaps following out threads of the story. There's a pretty good shootout with the two guys using long rifles--this is the older west, though already the myth had been around quite a while.

Apparently the earliest Ford film to survive intact, Straight Shooting could hardly be bettered as a prototype for so many films later in his career-- there are moments that are reproduced almost exactly in The Searchers in particular, and to a lesser extent in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, etc. While this modest genre film doesn't treat these themes with the deep emotional resonance of the later classics, it is surprisingly serious and thoughtful, and shows that the young Ford was unusually responsive to the emotional gravity that an older star like Carey could bring to a simple shoot 'em up-- the film is more mature than many of his 20s films with George O'Brien.