'49-'17

The plot of "'49-'17" is as bad as its unfortunate title, and it betrays a poor sense of time. The action takes place primarily in modern times (1917) with flashbacks to the Gold Rush of 1849 (hence the title), with most of the main characters present in both eras. Unfortunately, the main characters (who were already adults in 1849) have only aged about forty years by 1917, whilst Peggy Bobbett (who was only an infant in 1849) looks to be only about twenty years old in 1917.

In 1849, J.R. Brand and his partner Bob Adams went prospecting in California, accompanied by Adams's wife Beatrice and their infant daughter Lorena. But Beatrice died and Lorena Adams disappeared. A few days later, near the mining camp of Nugget Notch, Brand strikes it rich in the goldfields. He feels obligated to share his new fortune with Adams, but is temporarily unable to do so.

Fade in to 1917. Brand has invested his own and Adams's wealth wisely, and he's now a respected retired judge. Nugget Notch is now a ghost town. Brand buys the town and populates it with the cast of a bankrupt wild-west show. Bankrolled by Brand, Nugget Notch is now a tourist attraction, recreating a sanitised version of Gold Rush days. The town attracts the attention of "Gentleman Jim" Raynor, a crooked gambler. (Raynor is played by Jean Hersholt, an actor who is still fondly remembered for his philanthropic activities offscreen, but who usually played slimy villains. In this film he plays one of his slimiest roles.)

Brand hopes to locate Lorena Adams (who must be an adult by now) so that he can give her the fortune which Brand feels belonged to her father. The infant Lorena was found by the homespun couple the Bobbetts, who named her Peggy and raised her as their own child. Peggy Bobbett has no memory of her past life as Lorena Adams. (Why don't they just call her Lorena Bobbett?)

Eventually, Raynor learns the truth about Lorena, and he blackmails the Bobbett family, threatening to expose their daughter Peggy's true identity. (It's not clear why they should seek to conceal this, especially as Lorena Adams is an heiress.) When the blackmail scam fails, Raynor decides to rob the town hall. The film degenerates into incoherent chases and showdowns.

I really wanted to like this film, but it makes no sense and has many lapses in logic ... not least the fact that the characters age inconsistently, and none of them age plausibly. The film looks as if it was shot without a script, and then the dialogue and intertitles were written afterwards in an attempt to create a storyline for the footage. In fact, many silent films (mostly bad ones) were created this way. Thar's not much gold in these hyar hills. Too bad.

I'd like to hear the story of how this mess of a movie came to be. The home video description goes out of the way to call it a parody, but a viewing offers no support of this. No, rather, this is the kind of film that deserves to be parodied. Part of the story is similar to another 1917 Western, Douglas Fairbanks's "Wild and Woolly", which was intentionally comical. In both films, a fake Western town is made to please the notions of a man from New York of the old West. As opposed to "Wild and Woolly", however, the old judge in this picture knows it's fake because he planned it--in an attempt to relive his youth as a '49er (that is, a gold digger in California's Gold Rush of the 1840s-1850s). The only seeming attempt at humor here is some gunplay by the judge that frightens the troupe of actors for his re-created town.

That "'49-'17" isn't a comedy or parody isn't the problem; rather, that was an unused solution to its mess. Instead, the filmmakers appear to have tried to cover the film up with a lot of title cards, which seem to have reworked the original scenario, as the titles and what we see don't always add up. There may have been some considerable editing done, too, as the resulting film today is choppy in places. None of this avoids what remains a sloppy, poorly-paced story, though.

Furthermore, the story's chronology and sense of aging is illogical. Through many flashbacks, the plot moves back and forth between the judge's days as a '49er to the present year of 1917 (hence the title). That's a time gap of 60 years or more, depending on when the judge took part in California's gold rush. The judge's aging between these periods is the closest to being plausible; the rest makes no sense. The baddie Gentleman Jim Raynor and his accomplice appear in '49 and '17 with the exact same appearance, as men somewhere around their 30s. Peggy is suggested as being a once-abandoned child from the gold rush, but she can't be any older than in her 20s by 1917. Additionally, the film is full of Western melodramatic contrivances and clichés, which just become boring when constructed so poorly and situated among such enormous continuity problems. F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre already took the fitting pun for an IMDb review title for this film: fool's gold, indeed.

One part I found interesting was Jean Hersholt's image as Gentleman Jim Raynor, who's clearly signified as the bad cowboy by his black dress and goatee, and he carried a mean look throughout the picture. Too bad such skillful character acting is wasted on this mess.

As many other reviewers noticed, the movie is full of cliches and some continuity errors especially relating to the age of the characters. Indeed the title is '49-'17, so some characters should be much older than you see in the movie. I wondered if the "49" might be related not to the real year, but to a sense of "westerness" as identity that the judge feels. I mention this because in "Roughing it" by Twain, "real" western people (he writes in the 1870s) define themselves as fortyniners - and shun the tender-feet who just emigrated... however the title kind of points out they literally meant the judge had been out west in 1849, in which case... the movies wasn't really so deeply thought of...

However, I strangely found it enjoyable. It was described as a parody, which some people doubt. I did think some scenes were indeed to funny to be intended seriously. I will not fully spoiler even a movie like this, but one characters uses gold nuggets as stones to chase a wolf away and he does not realize they are not simple rocks.

The story is weak or rather forces some deep suspension of disbelief. In any case it was a fun watch.

A judge "out East" misses the days of his youth out west and hires a man to go out and find actors who will populate the old deserted town he once lived in. The man he sends ends up in San Diego (excellent scenery in the pigeon feeding scenes) and happens upon an old west show that is failing dismally. They are ready to take the judge up on his offer to populate "Nugget Notch" and the story goes from there.

Wildly improbable coincedences, an old mystery cleared up and on and on. Some of the story will have you scratching your head in confusion.

Nice diversion for a late night's viewing though. Early western by a rare woman director. Recommended marginally.

If you are familiar with San Diego's Balboa Park, you will want to watch the first half, at least, as the Botanical Building and Lily Pond are the setting for one scene.