The Half-Breed

Pretty heavy themes in this 1916 melodrama. I have just been rediscovering Fairbanks' early works and this one caught me by surprise. After watching silent films for almost 50 years, what a joy it is to see them digitally restored. A far cry from the fuzzy 8mm prints of my youth. If I had seen a musty out of focus truncated print of this film, I would have missed much of its joy. Thank you to all who worked so hard to bring this one back to all of us.

While Douglas Fairbanks is famous for his fantasy and adventure films (such as THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, ROBIN HOOD and THE MARK OF ZORRO), he also made a variety of other films...including some westerns early in his film career. TCM showed two of them tonight, THE GOOD BAD MAN and THE HALF-BREED. Both are about equally enjoyable, though THE HALF- BREED is exciting to watch because of its location filming in Boulder Creek (near San Jose) and Calaveras County (near Yosemite). Seeing all these giant redwoods is reason enough to see the movie!

When the film begins, a native woman has a baby and has been dumped by the father of the child. She is friendless and neither the whites nor Indians want anything to do with her. She then gives her baby to a nice old naturalist living in the woods then she kills herself! So the child is raised away from civilization by the old man. When the old guy dies, the now grown Sleeping Water (Fairbanks) travels to the nearby town and learns that pretty much most of the white folks he meets are Indian-hating scum. He decides to leave and return to the woods and is soon joined by Teresa, a woman who has stabbed two perverts who couldn't keep their hands off her. Additionally, Nellie from town inexplicably has fallen for Sleeping Water...as has Teresa. What's next? See the film.

While this is not a great film, it does do a nice job of humanizing the main character and the plot all centers on how trashy the 'civilized' white folks could be. In many ways, this is like a great silent western, THE SQUAW MAN...which is a must-see. As for THE HALF-BREED, it's very good for when it was made and ages reasonably well. Sadly, the film was restored by piecing together many different prints and some of them are pretty shabby condition- wise.

THE HALF-BREED is an incredibly underrated silent drama and I am so glad it recently got the gorgeous restoration it deserves. Photographed and acted beautifully, this is one of the best Hollywood productions of its time and still worth watching today.

That THE HALF-BREED came after the incredibly racist THE BIRTH OF A NATION is fascinating. The movie is not without its dated elements, but it is far more progressive in its call for tolerance and indictment of the white man's treatment of Native Americans than you would expect in a movie from 1916.

Doug Fairbanks is an actor more noted for his charisma and derring-do than his thespian chops. However, he does an admirable turn as Lo, the half-Native American, half-white outcast. This character is more somber than his usual roles, though no less active and principled. Sam De Grasse plays the villain as he often did for Fairbanks and he does well with his usual underplaying style.

However, the best performances come courtesy of Jewel Carmen and Alma Reubens. These two women get the meatiest roles in the movie: a flirtatious yet Machiavellian debutante flirting with scandal when she pursues Lo, and a world-weary con-woman on the run from the law and her own sordid past. Both bring great depth to these parts, neither fitting fully into the ingenue/vamp dichotomy you see in a lot of American films of the 1910s.

While THE BLACK PIRATE is my favorite Fairbanks movie, THE HALF-BREED is a close second. I absolutely enjoy watching this beautifully made movie and would recommend it to silent movie mavens.

This wonderful early silent by pioneering director Allan Dwan shows him in full mastery of film style -- excellent use of landscape, of close-ups, of action montage. The performances are all good, especially Alma Reubens as the woman who loves Fairbanks but thinks she'll never get him. A very fine script by Anita Loos. Well worth seeing -- and now you can because the film has been restored.

The Half-Breed (1916)

*** (out of 4)

A young Indian woman brings her newborn son to the home of a white man where she drops it off and shortly later kills herself. The baby, part white and part Indian, grows up to live a normal life but when his caretaker dies, the townspeople run him out. Soon he sees various racial injustice and pretty soon finds himself in the woods with another outcast.

THE HALF-BREED isn't the greatest film ever made but it's certainly an entertaining one that fans of silent cinema should enjoy. Douglas Fairbanks plays the title character and does a very good job with the role. Obviously the actor is very energetic but he manages to handle the small, quiet scenes just as well as any of the stuff that has him running around. The actor was very believable as the somewhat naive man who doesn't realize that people will hate him just because of his skin color.

The film's story isn't all that original and deals with the half-breed going up against a sheriff who just happens to be his real father, although neither one realizes it. The film features some terrific visuals and especially the scenes in the forest. There's a terrific climax where a fire breaks out and the movie ends on a very poetic note. The main reason to watch this film is certainly for Fairbanks and you have to wonder what his female fans in 1916 thought about his nearly nude entrance at the start of the picture.