Dangerous Hours

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.

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.